I’ve been called racial slurs by people who likely had Tourette Syndrome a few times in my life. It may seem wild when only about 1% of the population has Tourette Syndrome and only a small percentage of those have vocal tics that can cause them to yell out profanities and slurs. But I’m a Black woman in a majority white area and if there’s a racial slur to be said, there’s a large chance it’s gonna find me.

Both times that it happened to me I was a young adult working in retail. I remember the first time clearly. I remember a young man staring at me anxiously in the long line of holiday shoppers. I remember him turning his head away and back at me. I remember his family looking at him anxiously as well, like they knew what might be coming. This young man stood out to me because I’m a Black woman and part of why I was able to grow from a Black girl into a Black woman was because I learned early on to be on alert for white men who stare. So I was on alert. I was trying to ring up purchases in this long, impatient line. I was trying to be friendly and helpful. And every few seconds I was looking up at the white man who couldn’t stop staring at me.

It felt like it took him ages, but it likely only took a few minutes for the racial slur to be shouted out. As soon as it was out a hush went through the entire line. It seemed to match the air that was taken from my lungs in the same moment.

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It was not the first time I’ve been called a racial slur, and certainly not the last. I’ve been called various racist slurs online, in person, via old-school snail mail. By busses full of schoolchildren, by white gay men at clubs that were supposed to be safe, by elderly white men I volunteered to help as a teen, by white women who wanted me to be more “understanding” of their bullshit than I am, by angry young college kids who wanted to feel a moment of power. And every time it hits in the gut. It hits a little less hard now than it did when I was younger. But I know what’s in that word. I know how many times it was said as people were kicked, punched, shot, strung up. That reality comes with the word every time.

I know why that word exists.

So in this moment of my 1990’s youth, while I was trying to ring up Christmas purchases for $6 an hour, I was frantically trying to assess my safety after a grenade of a word had been launched at me in very hostile (white) territory.

As I looked at this young man, it was clear from the immediate horror on his face and on his family’s face that this man did not mean to shout what he did. It was clear by how they dropped their purchases and immediately shuffled out the door while apologizing. And even though it was also clear that nobody else in the line was going to say anything to acknowledge what had just happened, at least nobody else was going to join in.

“Okay!” I shouted, and took some deep breaths and went back to work.

I didn’t blame that young man for what happened. It wasn’t his fault that the word existed. Once I was able to get my heart rate back down, I actually felt bad for him. I could see his embarrassment and shame. In a world where every other time I had been called a racial slur it had been excused away by witnesses as just “something that happens,” his response was one of the few appropriate ones I’d experienced.

None of my coworkers said anything at the time. Nobody checked on me.

And I think it would have been okay if we had just stuck with that cowardly silence. But instead, within a few days, it became a bit of a joke. To them - perhaps because I didn’t scream, didn’t cry, because they couldn’t see all that I had to do to keep standing there, ringing up purchases - it became a funny story to reminisce about in the break room. Instead of being a one-time moment, it became something I got to relive over and over and over for the entertainment of my white peers.

Every Black person I know has a story of just trying to get through their day when some racist shit pops up. Every Black person I know has to regularly calculate their safety in those moments and figure out their next move. And every Black person I know is punished for whichever way they choose to react. If they are openly angry then they are dangerous, or militant, overreacting, or lacking empathy for the person who has just harmed them. If they react with kindness or a desire to educate then they are forced to carry the emotions of the person who has just harmed them. If they decide to ignore it then they are told by others that it’s obvious by their reaction that this harm is acceptable and it will continue in with gusto.

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These moments happen at work, on the street, in the grocery store. And they apparently also happen to our most celebrated actors onstage in front of an audience of millions. And when it happens, with the cameras rolling, they will have to assess their safety, gather their emotions, and continue on. Customers are waiting.

And the room will be silent. The burden will be entirely on them. They who didn’t say the word. They who didn’t create the word. They who have generations of trauma associated with that word. They will have to do all of the work.

In the aftermath of the BAFTA awards and the BBC’s decision to not remove a racial slur hurled at two Black actors from their broadcast (even though their lengthy air delay allowed them to cut out the portion of Akinola Davies Jr.'s speech that said “free Palestine”) there have been two very different conversations happening from two very different groups of people.

There have been the conversations about Tourette Syndrome, how it works, and the empathy and understanding we must have for it. In these conversations, Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo are barely mentioned. In the immediate aftermath of the slur being yelled, this was the only narrative, with host Alan Cumming saying: “Tourette syndrome is a disability, and the tics you’ve heard tonight are involuntary, which means the person who has Tourette syndrome has no control over their language. We apologise if you are offended tonight.”

The BBC followed suit focusing on understanding for the white man who had said the slur, only later offered a blanket apology, due to public pressure, that did not mention the two Black men that the racial slur was aimed at. The two Black men who had to gather themselves in front of cameras and continue on with their jobs as if nothing had happened were not given the basic respect of an apology by the network who decided to compound this hurtful moment by millions when they aired the slur unedited.

When I look at this incident and the coverage around it I, like many other Black people, think of my own personal history with racist slurs. But I also think of my experience as a disabled Black woman. And how much grace is given to whiteness that would never be given to someone like me.

Ableism is real, and it’s deadly. It’s especially deadly if you are Black, brown, or Indigenous and disabled. Over half of people killed by cops are disabled. Black and Indigenous people are more than three times more likely to be killed by cops than white people. You do the math as to what it means to be Black and disabled in this country.

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When we are harming nobody and we are beaten, arrested, shot, killed - there are no pleas for understanding. There is no demand to see our humanity. No demand to understand why we may act the way we do. When Elijah McClain dared to be an Autistic Black man in public, nobody demanded understanding for him. His needs were not centered. He was brutally murdered while he begged for his life.

I think about Elijah all of the time, even 6 years after his horrific murder. I think about his family, and the pain they must carry. I think about him now more than ever as I get ready to send my 6’5 neurodivergent Black teen off to college. I think about what the world will see when he’s struggling, when he gets overwhelmed or overstimulated. When he dares to be Black and Autistic in public. Who, besides me, will center his humanity? Who, besides me, will call for understanding? What will happen when I’m not there?

This is the fear of every Black parent, and the fear that dominates many thoughts of Black people with disabilities and the people who love and care for them. Every day of my life as a Black, queer, neurodivergent woman I’ve had to be hyper-aware of how I appear to people. I’ve had to control and stifle so much of who I am for my own personal safety. I have had to mask on so many different levels that I don’t even know who I fully am anymore. All of this to have a greater chance of survival. And I am reminded every day that none of it may be enough.

I, and every other Black disabled person in this country, has had to carry the entirety of the burden of this racist, ableist society on my shoulders. And instead of offering to carry any of it, the white people who witness and benefit from it will at best call me brave. At worst, they will tell me that I’m handling that burden incorrectly, or cry at having to witness it and expect me to comfort them in their tears.

I do not want outrage at John Davidson, the man who from all understanding did not intend to yell a racist slur at Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo. I want the same level of understanding and sympathy being offered to him by so many to be extended to the men who were primarily harmed in front of an audience of millions. In fact, I want more for them. I want them to be centered, I want them to be cared for above the person who caused harm - whether he meant to or not. I want accountability from the BBC; accountability that names what happened, named who was harmed, and takes full responsibility. I want this burden lifted off of the shoulders of those two Black men, off of all of us who right now are having to process this so publicly for our own safety, for our own humanity.

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We should not have to do this work while we are actively being harmed. And yet we are, each and every day of our lives. We are doing this work to save our own lives and it’s killing us. It may be killing us more slowly than this racist system aims to do, but it is killing us nonetheless. It is robbing us of our lives while we are still living.

It is unfair, it is unjust, and it needs to stop.

If you, by privileged accident of your birth, do not have to do this every day like we do I ask this of you: do your fucking part. Center us. Center our experiences. Demand understanding, demand care, demand accountability, demand justice.

We are not made unsafe because a disabled man yelled a racist slur against his will. We are made unsafe because the entire violence of that word is allowed to hit us every day of our lives as if that is a burden we were born to bear. We are made unsafe because people will witness that violence and more in silence. We are made unsafe because our humanity is never centered. We are made unsafe because an entire audience decided they were a spectator instead of the participant that they actually are.

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There is power in yearning, but only as a means to an end, not as an endstate in itself.

The post I’m Tired of Hearing About Yearning appeared first on Autostraddle.

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It’s all fun and games until the nimble little robot starts flailing demonically.

In footage circulating online, a Unitree G1 robot loses balance while performing in front of a crowd in China. As it hits the ground, it uncontrollably thrashes its limbs in all directions, hitting a man in the nose. 

The man, who appeared to be the robot’s operator, had tried to grab the humanoid machine to stop it from tipping over. Later in the video, he can be seen squatting on the ground nursing a bleeding nose.

While the injury didn’t appear life-threatening, the incident is a warning sign of how these popular androids can accidentally cause physical harm, something that becomes an increasingly serious risk as the machines continue to spend more time around humans.

A man named Eren Chen, who claims to work for the robotics firm Booster Robotics and shared the footage, homed in on a specific flaw in the Unitree robot’s design.

“With existing reinforcement learning policies, their robot is trained to do whatever it takes to stand up after a fall,” Chen wrote on X. “During that recovery attempt, it kicked someone in the nose, causing heavy bleeding and a possible fracture. This should be treated as a high-priority safety issue for Unitree to fix.”

Chen appears to be on to something. In other videos of Unitree G1 robots tumbling over, they often — but not always — thrash their limbs in random directions, making them unsafe to approach.

This isn’t the only example of someone getting hurt by an android. Another video showed a man performing martial arts moves get kicked in the groin by a G1 robot that was imitating his movements. 

Martial arts and fighting moves, in fact, have become a popular way of showing off a robot’s capabilities. While these stunts are amusing and impressive, they aren’t particularly relevant to the tech’s premise of being handy little assistants that can help us with our day-to-day chores.

They also do little to demonstrate that the robots are safe — something that should be the number one priority, if Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics are anything to go by. Underscoring this necessity, a whistleblower at the firm Figure AI warned that its robots were powerful enough to crush a human skull, recalling that one of them narrowly missed striking an employee when it suddenly malfunctioned and punched a refrigerator, leaving a deep gash in its stainless steel door.

More on robots: Amazon’s Shiny New Warehouse Robot Just Failed in Spectacular Style

The post Video Shows Man Bleeding After Flailing Robot Kicks Him in Nose appeared first on Futurism.

I've been thinking about them this year. I'm sure you know whom. Chances are, you've been thinking about them too.

Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres died at a hospital in Conroe, Texas after living in a concentration camp for six weeks. Geraldo Lunas Campos died by homicide in another concentration camp in El Paso, Texas. ICE claimed he tried to die by suicide, but the autopsy and witnesses confirm that his captors killed him. Víctor Manuel Díaz died in that same camp less than two weeks later. His family disputes ICE's claims that he died by suicide, too. Parady La died at a hopital in Philadelphia still under custody. He suffered from drug withdrawal in Philadelphia's concentration camp while his organs failed. Renee Nicole Good was leaving the scene of an ICE abduction near her home when they murdered her. The day before, Luis Beltrán Yáñez-Cruz died of heart failure in custody weeks after ICE kidnapped him. Heber Sánchez Domínguez died at a concentration camp in Georgia. It's possible he died by suicide but we don't know for sure. Alex Pretti was helping a fallen protestor when agents surrounded, beat, and shot him to death. I'm grateful to Melissa Hellmann at the Guardian for bearing witness to the people we've lost. She and many others have kept each of these names alive. Their lives held significance and value beyond their early deaths.

Indeed, those 8 people could have been any of us. Our oppressors don't care who we are. They believe that people who aren't white don't belong here. They believe that anyone white who stands against them are traitors to their race. It's unfortunate but true that we probably know two of these names best. I wish our society treated every life as having equal worth and value. Of course there's a racial component to that. The u.s. media never gave the same fair coverage to the war in Palestine that they gave the war in Ukraine. But these people and many more, 32 last year alone, died unjustly. Each loss is senseless and unnecessary.

This year, yes, but for every year since its founding, the united states has had a propensity for violence. With that, I realize, comes a numbness. A challenge for me is to keep from internalizing that numbness myself. I've been getting up early to read Ruth Wilson Gilmore's book Abolition Geography. Gilmore collected essays, speeches, and interviews over three decades of her work. If you're not familiar with the author, check out this interview with Sonali Kolhatkar. Or try the popular account Ruth Wilson Gilmore Girls (yep). Released in 2022, Gilmore's essays will feel relevant for as long as we throw people into cages. In one chapter, Gilmore writes,

“In my view, the founding moments of US nationalism, well-rehearsed in mainstream histories, are foundational to both state and culture. First, the United States was “conceived in slavery” and christened by genocide. These early practices established high expectations of state aggression against enemies of the national purpose—such as revolutionary slaves and indigenous peoples—and served as the crucible for development of a military culture that valorized armed men in uniform as the nation’s true sacrificial subjects.”

Gilmore argues that before it was even born, the culture of the u.s. was state aggression. The police and the military operate within that culture. Most people don't even notice it. Unless (until) you're the target of that aggression it feels like the radio. It's on in the background while we go about our lives at home and work. Agencies like ICE further weaponize that culture. They do their horrible work in outfits that look like what the police and american military wear. The Minnesota National Guard now wear vests so they don't look as much like ICE agents. But the focus—the target—of that aggression isn't fixed. It can change at any time to suit any purpose. This force might feel restrained with another president in office. But that's only because someone else is now in the crosshairs.

This is the landscape we live in. Change here is possible, even critical, but it won't be easy. Against the terror in our world, we can be steadfast and resolute, like a stone resists a river. Or we can be persistent and overwhelming, like the same river against the stone. I heard Ruth Wilson Gilmore speak at a conference a few years ago. She said, “There are more of us than there are of them. Our job is to find more us.” Whatever we resist, we must resist together.

I hope I live a long life. But I also make that same wish for the people I defend. We all deserve a life of comfort, of safety, of belonging. Where I differ from my enemies is that they want that kind of life only for themselves. They will exploit, imprison, burn out, and even kill a person who they feel is a threat to their own comfort. There is no reform capable of controlling this violence. Training only produces more efficient killers. It only makes people's deaths more high-resolution.

I'm still reading Abolition Geography so I'm sure I'll have more to say soon. People who are wiser and more experienced than me have put great thought into what might come next. They've been working on these issues for decades, even centuries. I see my role, in part, is to draw from their wisdom and incorporate it into my own. My role as a descendant is to bear witness and keep standing up. I hope we continue to stand together. I hope we can find more us.