2/ Judas and the Black Messiah has six Oscar nods. The electrifying film is based on the true story of Illinois Black Panther Party chair Fred Hampton’s assassination in 1969 and the FBI informant who infiltrated the organization to enable it. bit.ly/3rUtL79
3/ David Fincher's Mank raked in the most Oscar nominations of any movie. It's a classic Oscar movie with an edge, the tale of the man who wrote Citizen Kane and the dawn of a new Hollywood era. bit.ly/38JZvUV
4/ Minari is a beautiful family drama about a Korean American family searching for their own American dream in the Ozarks. It's thoughtful, funny, and moving, and it landed six nominations. bit.ly/3lhr4ds
5/ Nomadland stars Frances McDormand as a woman who must leave her small town and becomes part of the nomad community. It's an aching reminder of the loneliness and loss that many older Americans face in a country that has no place for them. bit.ly/3vn6hd7
6/ Cassie Thomas is on a mission to exact revenge on every “nice guy” she meets. Promising Young Woman is punchy, relatable, and delves deep into what vengeance does to the soul. bit.ly/3cyGNAN
7/ In 1968, a group of anti-Vietnam War protestors were accused of conspiring to cross state lines and incite riots at the Democratic National Convention. Aaron Sorkin's The Trial of the Chicago 7 revisits this time in history with a star-studded cast. bit.ly/2Q2t2Tf
Unexplainable is our new science podcast about the most fascinating unanswered questions in science and the mind-bending ways scientists are trying to answer them.
2/ First up: Scientists all over the world are searching for dark matter: an invisible, untouchable substance that holds our universe together. But they haven’t found it. Are they chasing a ghost?
3/ Next: Scientists still don't understand exactly how the human nose works.
But this mystery isn't holding researchers back from building a robot nose with artificial intelligence. The hope is that the robot nose can eventually detect diseases.
1/ Sharon Lavigne lives in St. James Parish, Louisiana, a predominantly Black town with one of the highest cancer risk levels from air pollution in the US.
Years of pollution from nearby chemical plants has affected residents’ health — including hers. bit.ly/3dLQwpG
2/ After being diagnosed with pollution-linked autoimmune hepatitis and seeing neighbors die from other illnesses, she started RISE St. James, a faith-based environmental justice group that aims to prevent more industrial developments in their neighborhood.
3/ RISE St. James is trying to prevent the construction of a $9.4 billion plastic plant that could double the amount of toxic chemicals already in the area.
It’s just one example of how Black neighborhoods in the US have been fighting back against industrial pollution.
EXCLUSIVE: More than a dozen current and former Amazon corporate employees told @delrey that they saw a pattern of systemic racial bias at the company, which affected Black employees’ career growth and personal lives. vox.com/recode/2021/2/…
Chanin Kelly-Rae, a former diversity leader at Amazon, quit her job there after 10 months.
“Amazon was not doing things in a way that represents best practices that would advance diversity and inclusion in any way that is meaningful and thoughtful,” Kelly-Rae told @Recode.
Several Black Amazon women employees say they and their peers faced microaggressions from coworkers and managers.
One white male manager told a Black female colleague, “My ancestors owned slaves, but I’m pretty sure they were good to their slaves.”
1/ The racial justice protests have slowed down, and the black squares on Instagram are gone. So what now?
Rethinking Policy for Black America is a Vox series that examines policy ideas that aim to start reforming 400 years of systemically racist policy. trib.al/02EqDc5
2/ First up: baby bonds. White families are nearly 10 times wealthier than Black families. Some experts say that gap should be fixed by giving all children a yearly chunk of money they can access when they’re 18 — starting with $1,000 at birth. bit.ly/3aoU2UN
3/ Second: school funding. A wealthy neighborhood means a wealthy school district. Black neighborhoods are valued at nearly half the price of white ones. Experts say improving school funding, by cutting its link to property taxes, could fix this gap. bit.ly/3s33R0M