#also his speech was so beautiful always mentioning puerto rico

[doinggreat]

BAD BUNNY Wins the Best Música Urbana Album for Un Verano Sin Ti at 2023 Grammys

[waywardsignnsa]

Week Birthday Gifts.

@hcppiier being super extra

Monday: His gifts were the flowers, breakfast, plus the lovely time in bed together. His gift was the ridiculous announcement that everyone should fall to their knees and praise Inaya like the goddess she was. To be called ridiculous and earn that one of a kind smile from her to.

Tuesday: His gift today was clothing he hand picked out and crafted for her. Having watched her struggle to find clothing in the past, he always found it enjoyable to pick out clothes for her. Especially when they showed her shape and formed how he liked it to be shown. And to bring out the lovely color of her eyes as well. He bought a fair amount of traditional clothing, shoes, and jewelry along with it. Along with the modern clothing he thought look quite lovely on her. He wanted her to love how she looked, just how he loved how she looked in every single way.

Plus .. he hired someone to take pictures of them in said clothing. Wanting more images of them around their place ( yes portraits of them will be hanging around and even just of Inaya ). Though he definitely spend more time behind the camera that in front of it ( a rare sight ). Mostly because he like watching her instead. He announced her entry to the bar again. with magic that illuminated her and brought all attention to her. He showed off the pictures they had taken to nearly everyone as well, probably annoying some who just wanted to drink. But all these pictures were soon to have written messages on the backs of them. Words from Zafir to Inaya, telling her about everything that he loves about her on each one.  Wednesday: A spa day , from yours truly. oh yes he hired the best of the best to properly pamper her ! from all the different ways to be pampered, he had gotten it for her. from facials, manicures, pedicures, mud baths – he did leave the massage for him to do and him alone. Because though he wanted her to be pampered, he wanted to show her proper pampering in all forms. From his hands .. to his tongue. The massage hopefully helped her wine down even some more than before. She was to be treated like the Queen she was, for that day she was pampered like she should always have been. The bar’s announcement of her entry was in the form of a complete song production ! He managed to get the employees to help him along with this as ridiculous as it was , it was needed as the spotlight would fall on her as he completed the lovely song – the one in their language for her ears and her ears alone. A song that spilled his love for her and spilled his admiration, his desire, his pride in her. All in a language just for her, even casting a spell for anyone who could understand to not be able to for now. All ending it in a deep kiss regardless of the crowd. 

Thursday: IT WAS TRIP DAY !! Trip, trip, they were going on a trip this time. Oh where do, you may ask ? Well they were going to a very, very lovely ocean spot in Puerto Rico !! Though yes, maybe they could have gone back to their lovely home – He wanted to go to the beach and see Inaya in a swimsuit. He even rented the beach for them and them alone – add a few little human servants to retrieve them things but it was just for them and them alone. To soak in the sun, for Zafir to properly admire Inaya no matter what she was wearing. Though there was no doubt she look the most beautiful once she was in the water. When he could swim by her, playfully hit water or pick her up to kiss and spin her. And it wasn’t just a fun day at the beach, but it was also a romantic dinner at the most wonderful of places. Paying more and more to get a good space for them, a good view of the ocean and so the sunset colors could hit Inaya’s face in the best of ways. Though he left Sarabi in charge of the bar, he made sure for her to go around collecting more gifts from people and reading a long speech he made about Inaya while he was away. 

Friday: Surprisingly, today was a relax day. A lazy day filled with lazy kisses and lazy touches. Of course, even if it wasn’t completely extraordinary, he got her a gift anyways. Whether or not it was a good idea to purchase her a little lion cub, one that apparently was be sold for its Melanism ( all black coat ) – he wanted to save it from being killed for it. So .. he thought it was only appropriate to purchase it instead … well not purchase because he literally stole the cub and killed the seller. But he wasn’t going to mention that to Inaya at all. The cub already wore a rather expensive appearing collar, gemstones the color of Inaya’s eyes. It was yet another necklace for Inaya, but he thought it was cute like this. If she chose to release the cub back to the wild, it would be fine with him. However theres no doubt he will put a charm on the creature so it won’t ever be harmed again. Again, he left the bar to Sarabi and Khatijah. For this night he was completely focusing on Inaya once more. To make love to her in the most sensual way and letting her have some more control this time around. 

Saturday: Ha ! You cannot peak for the next gift at all !! Just going to have to wait for tomorrow for the wonderful surprise. This was the more nerve wrecking gift, but he didn’t mind too much. He spend too long making it !! So definitely prepare for something lovely. 

Now there might be some women that wouldn’t be comfortable or accepting of all of this ... but Inaya was not one of those women. Nor would she ever be ... quite frankly she was more than happy that Zafir was spoiling her as he was. Granted he certainly was incredibly extravagant and more than over the top ... enough so she was certain there were a few customers that were avoiding the bar that week but she couldn’t give a damn. This was her week ... and anybody that didn’t like it could keep it to themselves. 

Each and every day was nothing less than absolute beauty for Inaya ... but it was more than that. She felt loved, she felt cherished ... but above all she truly felt like the queen Zafir claimed her to be. Everything that he did through the week ... everything that he gave to her, made her heart soar. How she thought she could live without him in her life as he was now, she didn’t know ... 

Each touch made her happier, each tender kiss made her feel loved ... and every look made her feel beautiful in a way she damn well knew nobody would ever be able to do. Granted ... she wouldn’t let anybody that close to do that ... but that was beside the point. 

All in all? The whole week was perfection ... and there was absolutely no doubt that the best was yet to come ...

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Every year, the FBI releases a report that is considered the gold standard for tracking crime statistics in the United States: the Crime in the United States report, a collection of crime statistics gathered from over 18,000 law-enforcement agencies in cities around the country. But according to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight, the 2016 Crime in the United States report — the first released under President Trump’s administration — contains close to 70 percent fewer data tables1 than the 2015 version did, a removal that could affect analysts’ understanding of crime trends in the country. The removal comes after consecutive years in which violent crime rose nationally, and it limits access to high-quality crime data that could help inform solutions.

Published under the auspices of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, the Crime in the United States report contains national data on homicides, violent crimes, arrests, clearances and police employment that has been collected since the 1960s. The UCR’s report is an invaluable resource for researchers who track national crime trends and is a rich reference database for journalists and members of the general public who are interested in official crime statistics. Among the data missing from the 2016 report is information on arrests, the circumstances of homicides (such as the relationships between victims and perpetrators), and the only national estimate of annual gang murders.

Tables, by category, in the FBI’s Crime in the United States report, 2015-16

NUMBER OF TABLES CATEGORY 2015 2016 CHANGE Arrests 51 7 -44 Context for crimes* 23 6 -17 Crimes† 25 17 -8 Police dept. employee counts 12 7 -5 Clearances 4 1 -3 Total 115 38 -77

* Expanded offense data beyond the aggregate number of crimes reported by law enforcement. † Aggregates of the number of violent and property crime offenses reported by law enforcement.

Source: FBI

Changes to the UCR’s yearly report are not unheard of, and the press release that accompanies the 2016 report, which was published in late September, acknowledges the removal of some tables, saying that the UCR program had “streamlined the 2016 edition.” But changes to the report typically go through a body called the Advisory Policy Board (APB), which is responsible for managing and reviewing operational issues for a number of FBI programs. This time they did not.

In response to queries from FiveThirtyEight about whether the changes to the 2016 report had been made in consultation with the Advisory Policy Board, a spokesman for the UCR responded that the program had “worked with staff from the Office of Public Affairs to review the number of times a user actually viewed the tables on the internet.” When FiveThirtyEight informed a former FBI employee of the process, he said it was abnormal.

“To me it’s shocking that they made these decisions to publish that many fewer tables and they didn’t make the decision with the APB,” James Nolan, who worked at the UCR for five years and now teaches at West Virginia University, told FiveThirtyEight.

Nolan called the FBI’s removal of the tables for lack of web traffic, “somewhat illogical.” (A spokesman for the UCR program told FiveThirtyEight that in the last year, the UCR received 3,045,789 visitors.)

“How much time and savings is there in moving an online table?” Nolan said. “These are canned programs: You create table 71 and table 71 is connected to a link in a blink of an eye.”

These removals mean that there is less data available concerning a perennial focus of Trump and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions: violent crime. Trump and Sessions have frequently talked about MS-13, a gang with Salvadoran roots, as a looming problem in the country. MS-13 has been cited in 37 Department of Justice press releases and speeches in 2017, compared to only nine mentions in 2016 and five in 2015. Sessions gave a speech on the organization last month, while Trump gave a speech on Long Island in July, saying the gang had “transformed peaceful parks and beautiful quiet neighborhoods into bloodstained killing fields. They’re animals.” Trump also frequently refers to gun violence in Chicago, and at the beginning of his presidency, he established a Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office, which aims to study and promote awareness of crimes committed by immigrants who entered the country illegally.

Although the removal of the tables makes it more difficult to get information on one of the White House’s most prominent causes, it also seems like part of a trend in the Trump administration: the suppression of government data and an unwillingness to share information with the press and public. About two weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the FEMA website stopped displaying key metrics relating to island residents’ access to drinkable water and electricity. The data was later restored. The early days of the Trump administration were marked by reports that federal agency employees had been instructed not to talk to the press and to restrict social media postings.

Since Trump took office, government watchdog groups have been concerned about access to government data and maintaining the integrity of that data. Before Trump’s inauguration, Louis Clark, the executive director and CEO of the Government Accountability Project, an organization that protects whistleblowers, told FiveThirtyEight that he worried that the public information offices in various agencies could interfere with transparent sharing of information with the public.

The fact that the FBI Office of Public Affairs rather than the Advisory Policy Board determined which data tables to remove hearkens back to patterns of suppression from the George W. Bush administration. “They set up all these PR operations,” Clark said about the Bush administration’s tactics. “If a reporter called up and wanted to know about the Arctic, the scientists getting the question couldn’t answer and were required to send the reporter to the government PR person.”

The data missing from the report is mostly about arrests and homicides. There were 51 tables of arrest data in the 2015 report, and there are only seven2 in the 2016 report. Data about clearance rates — essentially the percentage of crimes solved — was covered in four tables in 2015 but just one in 2016. The expanded offense data — information collected by the FBI beyond the number of crimes committed, such as the type of weapon used or the location of a crimes — went from 23 tables in 2015 to 6 in 2016.

There were 15 tables of murder data in 2015, but in 2016 there were only a few tables offering expanded insights on homicides. The expanded homicide data from 2016 doesn’t include statistics on the relationship between victims and offenders; victims’ and offenders’ age, sex, race or ethnicity; or what weapons were used in different circumstances. Practically speaking, that means that researchers can no longer easily identify the number of children under the age of 18 murdered by firearm in a given year. Additionally, data tables used to identify the number of women murdered by their partners are similarly no longer available.

The removal of this expanded homicide information is not acknowledged in the report. Also, the FBI’s 2016 definition of expanded homicide data, which is identical to the one from 2015, says that the agency collects “supplementary homicide data that provide the age, sex, race, and ethnicity of the murder victim and offender; the type of weapon used; the relationship of the victim to the offender; and the circumstance surrounding the incident. Statistics gleaned from these supplemental data are provided in this section.” This suggests that murder circumstance data will be provided, though none is.

While the UCR says that the data no longer included in the report was available upon request, the FBI only provided a raw data file, which is more difficult to analyze — especially compared to easily accessible data tables — and does not always match the figures posted online in the UCR reports.3

The FBI noted that in addition to its decision to streamline the report, UCR had launched a Crime Data Explorer, which aims to make crime data more user-interactive. But data contained in the explorer does not replicate what is missing from the 2016 UCR report, and it doesn’t allow users to view data for particular years, but rather aggregates trends over a minimum period of 10 years. The National Incident-Based Reporting System is another tool the FBI uses to provide more detailed information on crimes, but it too does not replicate what is missing from the 2016 UCR report and has a substantially lower participation rate4 from police departments across the country.

Richard Rosenfeld, former president of the American Society of Criminology and a professor at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, noticed that the 2016 report no longer had data for a trend area that he tracks — homicides related to the narcotic drug trade. “One could argue the Trump administration is interested in the opioid epidemic and might be interested in its criminal justice consequences,” he said.

“I simply don’t understand why they would omit any of the tables that they have included from years past.”

If you have any tips or insights into the changes to the 2016 Crime in the United States Report, please send them to clare.malone@fivethirtyeight.com.

[peterpanofberk]

I remember...(trigger warning, see tags)

I remember growing up and feeling self conscious about the way I looked. Through the media and toys and what I saw around me, what was beautiful was straight hair, great vision, perfect teeth, and light skin. I always felt like I was never beautiful...i would always say that I was cute at best and that was what I believed given i have curly hair, bad vision, teeth aren’t perfect, and natural tan skin.

I remember denying every aspect of myself. I wouldn’t listen to stories of my people, eat the food, learn the culture. For a reason I couldn’t explain I had felt ashamed of my heritage. I would always tell people that I’m practically white, or that I am white. I had just wanted to fit in with everybody else, all my friends who were white. And it was like that all the way until middle school.

I remember starting high school and there was no denying of who i was. By high school i started to have some more friends that were also PoC and I started to feel better. But despite finally admitting what my race was I would say that I was “raised white”. When my race was brought up in conversation it was always used to be for the punch line of some joke. To which I would laugh with them cause I didn’t want to seem too touchy because I felt like they wouldn’t understand.

I remember one of my friends, who was proud of her race and heritage. I knew the stories of when her how many great grandparents were brought over from Africa and their journey and survival over here. Seeing how proud she was started to make me feel proud of mine...I wouldn’t just say that I was mixed race anymore but I would admit, I am half Native American, half Puerto Rican. 

However I also remember that very friend notice the group of people who I would hang out with the most and how they were mostly white. I remember her saying “act your race” during lunch one day. I remember getting confused...what does that even mean? “Act my race”? Which one? I remember trying to just ignore it but letting it be...I went back to not talking about what I was because...again I didn’t know now. 

I remember entering college. Now I have more confidence. I have found my pride, I started to learn more about my culture and I had found so much peace in it. Given I did embrace the Native side more than my Puerto Rican side, but that is due to growing up in a Native household since my parents divorced when I was 4 and I lived with my mother...and it was my father who was Puerto Rican. And I remember a different girl who had just moved here from Puerto Rico saying “you can’t call yourself Puerto Rican if you don’t speak spanish or know our culture”.... which made me feel like I shouldn’t admit that half of me cause I don’t speak spanish..or know a lot of the culture. I tried talking to my grandparents but they only spoke spanish..so it was difficult. I knew more of Native culture but I didn’t speak it...

I remember only admitting I’m native and being okay with that cause I felt guilty if I said I was Puerto Rican since I felt like I didn’t know enough. I might mention it but it would quickly follow “but i don’t know spanish or anything”

I remember transferring to a new school and it was more progressive..more diverse and I was able to embrace who I was again. Not only my race but admitting that I was gay or ace (it had changed through my journey of figuring out what fits for me) since I now had such welcoming support. I made new friends, given they were all still white, but they were open minded and were active in using their white privilege to help point out discrimination. We would have deep talks of it, they would always ask my views. It felt great. I thought I met people who could understand. 

Until I realized that they didn’t. I remember when the election was happening and I made sure I voted. I was so scared of the idea of Trump winning. And when he won I remember crying. I remember talking to them the next day and they were saying things like. “Yeah he said that during his campaign but his opening speech gives me hope..did you hear what he said?” “oh its not gonna be that bad” 

And thats when I realized they would never understand..they were straight..they were white...sure they may be opened minded and active and progressive but they would never feel the fear that I do..understand the struggles that I do..and my struggles weren’t even the worst of it cause even for my race my skin was on the fairer side..not white..but fairer.

“Its not gonna be that bad” 

I remembered that when one of my friends, who will be one of the nicest men you will ever meet. One of the hardest workers I know..I saw him literally give his jacket to a kid once because he felt like kids jacket wasn’t warm enough and he could always buy another. I remembered those words they said when he woke up two days later after Trump took office and he had the N-word spray painted on his door. 

“Its not gonna be that bad”

I remembered those words when my gay roommate came home shaking because some people were harassing her and the bathroom she used. I remember those words when our trans neighbor was getting purposefully misgendered because “if you have a dick you’re still a dude”...and when saying “trump nation” when they laughed while she ran off to cry.

“Its not gonna be that bad”

I remembered those words when waiting for my sister downtown my sister who I see once every six months cause she lives in a different state and we were gonna go out to eat and I arrived a bit early..eager for her arrival. Waiting outside the night diner we loved to go to while all the other college kids were bar hopping...

I remember two drunk white guys approaching me...dragging me to a nearby park where nobody could see behind some bushes and a bench...I remember them beating when I struggled and tried to scream...I remember they both raping me at the same time and I couldn’t even see my sister that night cause after they left I took what little strength I had to go to a friends house who lived down the block and had her help me..eventually making it to the hospital to make a report and get checked.

“its not gonna be that bad” 

I remember that now as I sit here typing this. Dropped out of school cause my grades dropped because I was too scared to go to class and leave my room. As I sit here writing this late at night cause I cant sleep due to nightmares that my therapist says is from PTSD. I remembered those words as I have to take so much medication and more doctors appointments because I am terrified that one of them had an STD and that I’ll get one...me who has never had sex before...

I had remembered those words. Cause that night I remember them saying that they’ll “straighten me out” and throwing racial slurs at me. 

I remember those words too. I wish I could forget..

but I remember.