US Sues North Carolina Over Transgender Bathroom Law
The fight is officially on between the federal government and North Carolina over transgender rights, as the Justice Department filed a civil rights suit against the state, challenging it’s so-called “bathroom bill.” The controversial law bans people from using public bathrooms that don’t correspond with their biological sex. The federal government is threatening to curtail funding to the state over the discriminatory bill. [ABC]
Obama Continues Making History, Plans to Visit Hiroshima
A little over a month after a groundbreaking visit to Cuba — the first American president to do so in over 80 years — President Barack Obama is planning to do it again. This time, however, it’ll be a week long visit to the Japanese city bombed at the end of World War II. Obama said he’ll pay tribute to the nearly 80,000 victims of Hiroshima, but doesn’t plan on apologizing for the attacks in that city or Nagasaki. [LA Times]
Trump Gave A Bunch of Money to the Charity Run by the Wife of CNN’s President
In a possible conflict of interest, Donald Trump donated $150,000 to the nonprofit that runs Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School, the school that Trump’s son attends. [Buzzfeed]
Ta-Nehisi Coates Says He's Cancelling Move to Dream Home in Brooklyn After News Leaks
Following media coverage (by this publication and others) of his recent purchase of a $2.1 million townhouse in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, author Ta-Nehisi Coates and his family decided they no longer feel comfortable moving to the home and neighborhood, which Coates described as “The Dream” in a piece explaining his choice to reverse course. [The Atlantic]
Watch John Oliver Tear Apart Cable News’ Coverage of Science Reporting
In his reliably tummy-tickling latest segment, comedian John Oliver critiques the contradictory way scientific studies are covered by reporters, revealing instances where scientific findings are misinterpreted, blow out of proportion or taken out of context. [Last Week Tonight]
‘Trump’ of the Philippines Wins National Election
Known as the ‘Trump’ candidate of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte won the country’s presidential election Monday. The former mayor has drawn comparisons to Donald Trump for his off-color remarks. He previously cursed Pope Francis, made publicly crude comments about gang rape, and advocated using violent tactic such as death squads to clean up crime in his city of Davao. "If I make it to the presidential palace, I will do just what I did as mayor. You drug pushers, hold-up men and do-nothings, you better go out,” he said during a campaign stop. “Because as the mayor, I'd kill you.” [USA Today]
Facebook’s “Trending” Section is Biased: Report
If you think Facebook's showing you all trending news stories, you're wrong, according to former Facebook employees who shared their experiences with Gizmodo. The social media giant’s former news curators said they were instructed to “inject” certain stories into the section even if they weren’t trending at all and were told not to include stories about conservative topics. [Gizmodo]
Success Academy Teachers Might be Cheating Under Pressure to Succeed
A newly-reported trove of internal documents on Eva Moskowitz’s controversial charter school empire shows an attempt by Moskowitz to cover up a study that found, among other problems, an inclination to cheat among teachers under pressure. POLITICO New York reporter Eliza Shapiro also obtained exit interviews that have at least one employee saying people “left so frequently that the office felt like the movie ‘The Disappeared.’” [Capital New York]
Why White People Don’t Use White Emoji
In an illuminating piece that analyzes the rate at which people use emojis with skin tone on Twitter, The Atlantic shows what we all kind of felt anyway: It’s pretty weird for a white person to use the white emoji (especially the closed fist one, we’d wager) and, predictably, fewer of them do it. But the piece also looks at how other races use the skin tones, what that means and how the emoji changed the way we think about race online. [The Atlantic]
Lindy West on Labels Like ‘Big’ and the Body Image Lie
A heartfelt and humorous excerpt from the writer’s upcoming book, which reflects on the damage society’s idealization of thinness can have on women, herself included. [The Guardian]
Streaming Music vs. Collecting Music
If you used to take great joy in collecting music but now mainly just use streaming services and feel somewhat conflicted about it, you are not alone. Leon Neyfakh chronicles how he made this transition himself, moving from having a carefully built and maintained music collection to “a random pile of files spread across my various devices” and says that Apple is the main reason his listening habits have changed so much. [Slate]
This column was compiled by DNAinfo reporters Eddie Small, Gwynne Hogan, Camille Bautista, Irene Plagianos, Noah Hurowitz, Rachel Holliday Smith, Carolina Pichardo, Shaye Weaver, Danielle Tcholakian and Jeanmarie Evelly.
