"Senate hopeful backtracks on apology for 'Nazi skull' tattoo insisting it's an 'eminently reasonable skull-and-crossbones'"

Today's headline from the Daily Mail. The NY Post went with, "Maine Dem Senate hopeful Graham Platner done apologizing for Nazi tattoo, claims Jewish leaders found his excuse ‘reasonable’." (The comments were apparently made in a paywalled interview)

Incredible episode of This Is Your Life

sorry to all other answers but it's this entire episode of This Is Your Life www.youtube.com/watch?v=JER5...

[image or embed]

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies.com) May 29, 2025 at 9:45 PM

Charli XCX's concert in a town north of New York led to mistaken fears of a migrant invasion

New York Magazine's consistently excellent Dinner Party newsletter this week: 

Most attendees, being city-based club kids, would take the train to Beacon, where buses would take them over to the art park.

...

These buses, some locals decided, and then expressed promptly on Facebook, were proof that migrants were being dumped from New York City and housed, improbably, at the Hudson Valley Resort and Spa in Kerhonkson.

"Uber and Bolt have become battlegrounds for a conflict between Nigerians and South Africans over a beauty pageant contestant"

The ride-hailing apps were being used by South Africans to schedule and cancel rides in Nigeria as  a prank. The apparent motivation for the pranks: 

Earlier this month, model ... pulled out of the Miss South Africa contest following public outcry and xenophobic attacks over her ethnicity. [The contestant], who was born in South Africa, was targeted because her father is Nigerian and her mother has Mozambican roots. Soon after, organizers of a similar contest in Nigeria invited [her] to participate in their event, and she accepted.

The incident fueled the long-standing tension between the two countries

From a BBC article with more detail on the beauty pageant:

This was not the first time that this has happened. For ...a Miss South Africa contestant last year, it has brought up difficult memories.

The 28-year-old was the target of the same vitriol heaped on [this year's contestant] because her father is Ugandan.

I didn't realize the Argentinian President and Vice President attacked those who criticized the Argentinian players for their incredible offensive song

From a long opinion piece at New Lines about racism in Argentina:

When the secretary of sports suggested in an interview that the players could apologize, he was promptly fired from his position by order of President Javier Milei, who asserted that no one could dictate “what to do or say to the world champion and two-time American champion players.”

Vice President Victoria Villarruel went a step further, turning the incident into a fervent nationalist and anticolonialist appeal in a post on X (formerly Twitter), which remains on her account @VickyVillarruel: “Argentina is a sovereign and free country. We have never had colonies or second-class citizens. We have never imposed our way of life on anyone. And we will not tolerate anyone doing it to us. Argentina was built with the sweat and courage of the Indigenous people, Europeans, Creoles and Black people like Remedios del Valle, Sergeant Cabral and Bernardo de Monteagudo. No colonialist country will intimidate us with a song on the pitch or by confronting the truths they refuse to admit. Stop pretending to be outraged, hypocrites. Enzo, I support you; Lionel Messi, thanks for everything! Argentinians, always hold your head high! Viva the Argentineness!”

That same night, the president’s sister rushed to the French Embassy to apologize for the vice president’s remarks. 

Reggie Jackson's remarkable speech today about the racism he faced while he played

Full clip, about a minute and a half longer: pic.twitter.com/yaIcJwIC7K

— Ben Porter (@Ben13Porter) June 20, 2024

"Tony Bennett’s Nazi Hunting Past Is Just One Reason He’s the Greatest Living American"

Overblown headline, but some noble anecdotes:

After Germany surrendered, Bennett was stationed there as part of the Allied occupying force. It was during this period that he was caught fraternizing with a black soldier—at a time when the U.S. Armed Forces were racially segregated. As a result, an Army captain literally spat on Bennett’s corporal stripes and assigned him to Graves Registration, where he had to dig up the bodies of deceased military personnel.

This brush with institutionalized racism changed Bennett’s life, and informed his decision to sign up with the Civil Rights Movement. He participated in the historic 50-mile Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965. To rally the crowd, Bennett sang on a makeshift stage constructed out of dozens of empty coffins.

Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924 had a "Pocahontas Exception" to appease wealthy Virginians

Wikipedia:

In 1924, the Virginia General Assembly enacted the Racial Integrity Act. The act reinforced racial segregation by prohibiting interracial marriage and classifying as "white" a person "who has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian

...

The Racial Integrity Act was subject to the Pocahontas Clause (or Pocahontas Exception), which allowed people with claims of less than 1/16 American Indian ancestry to still be considered white, despite the otherwise unyielding climate of one-drop rule politics. The exception regarding Native blood quantum was included as an amendment to the original Act in response to concerns of Virginia elites, including many of the First Families of Virginia, who had always claimed descent from Pocahontas with pride, but now worried that the new legislation would jeopardize their status

WaPo:

In Confederate mythmaking, that made Pocahontas the mother of the South. She was a symbol of Southern exceptionalism, a link to royal ancestry, a queen among the heathen. As John Esten Cooke wrote in his 1861 poem “A Dream of the Cavaliers,” she was “Our own dear Pocahontas! Virgin Queen of the West — With the heart of a Christian hero, in a timid maiden’s breast!” An Indian who embraced the virtues of whiteness, her symbolic presence in the Confederate cause helped to justify the subjugation of nonwhite people. During the war, one Virginia cavalry unit went so far as to name itself “The Guard of the Daughters of Powhatan” and emblazoned an image of Pocahontas on its battle flag as it fought to preserve slavery.

...

In 1887, former Virginia governor Wyndham Robertson published “Pocahontas and her Descendants” to assist those searching for ancestral connections to this most American of founding mothers. He noted that the descendants of Pocahontas ranked among the finest Americans, and therefore, he argued, she was clearly of superior stock.

...

To circumvent the stigma of Jim Crow segregation, the First Families of Virginia demanded that the law contain a “Pocahontas exception” . . . . The group needed an exception to claim an indigenous woman as a symbol of their superiority over nonwhites, including actual Indian people living in Virginia.

From February: "Three white supremacists have pleaded guilty to a plot to spark a national race war by attacking power grids throughout the United States"

TDB:

Court documents reveal that each man was assigned to attacking power grids in different parts of the country with powerful rifles. They believed that knocking out the power grids could cause such prolonged unrest in the country that a war—particularly, a race war—would begin.

"A Chinese security camera company has been advertising ethnicity recognition features to British and other European customers"

Guardian:

"The company removed both claims from its website following an inquiry from the Guardian"

...

In contrast with the US, [the company's] cameras are in widespread use in Britain, a Guardian investigation revealed in 2020

...

The company has acknowledged that its cameras may have been used in [China]’s “re-education camps”

"The late Queen's lady-in-waiting ... has apologised and resigned after she repeatedly asked a black British charity boss where she was from"

BBC with the summary.

Wikipedia:

She is the fifth and youngest daughter of the 12th Earl Waldegrave and Mary Hermione, Countess Waldegrave, née Grenfell (1909–1995). On 25 April 1959 she married Marmaduke Hussey

...

She is a godmother of William, Prince of Wales and was chosen to accompany Queen Elizabeth II at the funeral of Prince Philip

...

She has also received the Queen Elizabeth II Version of the Royal Household Long and Faithful Service Medal with 30-, 40-, 50- and 60-year bars

"Eton College has apologised after it was claimed girls visiting from a nearby state school were subjected to misogynistic language and racial slurs"

BBC:

Prince William and his brother, the Duke of Sussex, both attended Eton, as did the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

University of Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian apologized "for not singing 'The Eyes of Texas,' the school song, before leaving the field"

ESPN:

The song has been the subject of a controversy over the past few years as the school has reckoned with its origins likely tied to a minstrel show sung by performers in blackface. Former head coach Tom Herman was criticized for letting players choose whether they wanted to sing it.

At Sarkisian's introductory news conference in January 2021, he made a strong statement that it will not be a question going forward.

"I know this much, 'The Eyes of Texas' is our school song," he said. "We're going to sing that song. We're going to sing that proudly." 

But on Saturday, after the loss, only a few players remained on the field in Stillwater for the song.

Sarkisian said. "I apologize to everybody for that. That'll never happen again. But again, it was not intentional. It was not premeditated by any means.

Texas Tribune in March 2021:

From June to late October, over 70% of the nearly 300 people who emailed [the UT-Austin President]’s office about "The Eyes" demanded the school keep playing it. Around 75 people in emails explicitly threatened to stop supporting the school financially, calling on the university to take a heavier hand with students and athletes they believed were disrespecting university tradition by protesting it.

...

"[Alumni] are pulling planned gifts, canceling donations, walking away from causes and programs that have been their passion for years, even decades and turning away in disgust. Last night one texted me at 1:00 am, trying to find a way to revoke a 7-figure donation," President of the Longhorn Alumni Band Charitable Fund Board of Trustees ... wrote to a group of administrators, including [the university president]. "This is not hyperbole or exaggeration. Real damage is being done every day by the ongoing silence."

Alumni and donors threatened to cancel season tickets, end donations and boycott games. They complained that [the university president] was not forcefully defending the song and school traditions enough, accusing him of cowing to political correctness.

May 2021, Texas Monthly wrote at length on the topic and described the song's origin:

A few hours later, Sinclair handed over a piece of brown paper, a wrapper torn from a laundry bundle. It contained the first draft of a poem, written in pencil, with words scratched out and revised. Lines five and six read, “The eyes of Texas are upon you, all the livelong day.” The line echoed the favored refrain of university president William Prather, who ended nearly every speech with the saying, hoping to encourage students to work hard and act with integrity. In a 1900 address, Prather explained to students that his saying was inspired by a Confederate brigadier general who once told his troops, “The eyes of General Lee are upon you!” Prather used the phrase so much that students started to make fun of him.

Today's funny posts

@jidion_son Oh no… ⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️#CapCut #jidionclips #jidionthegoat #jidion #jidionpremium #funny #meme #rap #success ♬ original sound - Jidionisbetter👿

Northern "California high school football team forfeits season after players staged 'slave auction'"

LA Times:

Just days before the River Valley’s season was forfeited [related to the mock slave auction], Amador High School in Sutter Creek, also in Northern California, had its football team’s season canceled. The Sacramento Bee reported the Amador County Unified School District canceled the team’s season because of an investigation into a “highly inappropriate group chat” on Snapchat called “Kill The Blacks” that involved a majority of the team’s players.

During WWII, "2,200 Latin Americans of Japanese descent...were forcibly deported to internment camps in the US"

One of my political geography students is doing their project on this historical event: Peru deported over 2,000 Japanese people to the US to be placed in internment camps during WWII; many of them ended up at a work camp in NJ. I study this stuff and I had never heard of this.

— Austin Kocher, PhD (@ackocher) September 28, 2022

BBC from 2015:

an estimated 25,000 people of Japanese descent lived in Peru

...

after the outbreak of World War Two, the Japanese community in Peru became a target, and their assets were confiscated.

"In May 1940, as many as 600 houses, schools and businesses belonging to citizens of Japanese descent were burned down," she says.

Following Japan's 1941 attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the US government asked a dozen Latin American countries, among them Peru, to arrest its Japanese residents.

Records from the time suggest the US authorities wanted to take them to the US and use them as bargaining chips for its nationals captured by Japanese forces in Asia.

...

After World War Two ended, another 1,000 were deported to Japan after their Latin American home countries refused to take them back

"Project To Be Unveiled In LA Names Every Japanese American Incarcerated During WWII

LAist:

The daunting task of accounting for so many people was complicated by the fact that there were 75 incarceration sites, from Hawaii to Arkansas, each operated by one of an assortment of government agencies.

The Total Count: 125,284 Names

Wait, these DC comics "Hispanic Heritage" covers are real?

Seriously I cannot get over how pathetically uncreative these covers are when it comes to visually representing Hispanic heritage pic.twitter.com/HbGTLEDPfL

— Travis B. Hill (@travisbhill5) August 27, 2022

I thought this tweet was an exaggeration, an Onion-style parody with quick Photoshop? But they're real?:

Hong Kong's "Barrack O'Karma 2" tv series features a Chinese actress who darkens her skin to play a Filipina domestic worker

SCMP:

[Her] performance received praise from local media, including outlets such as HK01, which posted an article headlined “[The actress] deliberately blackened herself to turn into [a] maid, but in reality she’s a true beauty”.

In another article by the Hong Kong Economic Times, [she] was lauded as a gifted graduate of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in 2019, and commended for “practising the Filipino accent” in preparation for the role.

AFP:

despite its name, [the series] is a suspense thriller series and not about US politics.

...

There are about 340,000 foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong, mostly women from the Philippines and Indonesia.

Paid a minimum of HK$4,630 ($590) a month, they work six days a week and must live with their employers

"The real story" about the haunted lake described in the opening of "Atlanta" season three

The details are mostly an urban legend, because the racial injustices had already occurred in the area.

(Great first episode, a nightmarish Odyssey based on real life viral moments.)