In The Buzz Cut, we bring you a round-up of all the weird, controversial, and wonderful stories we’ve been reading all week.
Kanye West says he’s running for President of the United States, possibly on an anti-vaxx and pro-life platform. But, his actions so far don’t match up to his words — he has missed several state deadlines to register as a Presidential candidate, which begs the question — is this all just another publicity stunt?
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Earlier this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Instagram got flooded with thousands of thirst comments from Indian teenagers, which ranged from them calling him “daddy” to more vulgar, borderline insulting ones. It looked like a mass online campaign akin to what K-pop stans are doing to Trump. What’s behind this?
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The vocal far-right has found a home away from Big Tech platforms that are increasingly being called to police hate speech on social media. Called Parler, users post “Parleys” instead of tweets on the site, and “echo” them instead of retweet. Touted as a safe haven for free speech, will Parler gain prominence or be reduced to a fringe platform as have so many alternates that came before?
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As people are left to make pandemic decisions for themselves after lockdowns lift in many parts of the world, we’re going to start having the Covid19 talk with friends — are you washing your hands? are you wearing masks everywhere? How many people are you seeing on a regular basis?
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Michaela Cole, the creator of I May Destroy You — a comedic drama fictionalizing Cole’s sexual assault — is urging people to look inward with her critically-acclaimed show. In an interview with Vulture, she herself looks inward, about her relationship with God, and how an industry laced with racism scrambled to give her an opportunity to share her perspective while simultaneously treating her like an outsider.
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In the world of sex, straight males open to the idea of being pegged (penetrated with a strap-on) were considered as good as being gay, during a time when being gay was less about one’s sexual orientation, and all about how a man had sex. Today, however, that distinction has evaporated, as pop culture portrayals of straight men excited about pegging revolutionize, expand the ideas of sex and sexuality.
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‘Food is political‘ is a phrase increasingly appointed to refer to a vague notion of social justice within how we create and consume food. But nobody really knows what it means, partly because we aren’t having the deeper conversation of how food is political, which needs to include representation of different identities, and its fraught economics.
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As #BlackLivesMatter pulses through the United States, Indians need to look inward, at an equally pervasive (but often glossed over) system of hierarchy that has been in place in the country for centuries — caste. What will it take to make Dalit Lives Matter?
