Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Can a font be racist? Certain blackletter typefaces associated with hate groups

Addictive Ink Tattoo and Piercing Shop is one of many places in Southwest Florida to get a tattoo or piercing.

Daisy Pala is one of the shop’stattoo artists. For the past five years, she has helped customers select lettering that best illustrates the names, quotes, or titles used in their tattoos.

“I feel like a lot of people nowadays are leaning towards like a script font,” said Pala.

She admits to being well-versed on the types of fonts available to customers, but she does not always know the history or significance behind the many typefaces.

Experts in typography are pointing out that the font you choose for your tattoo could have a deeper history and may be linked to hate groups.

Merriam-Webster defines typography as the style, arrangement or appearance of typeset matter.

Typeface is a type of a single design, like Times New Roman or Arial. Typeface and font are often used interchangeably.

“Typography is language visualized. It documents cultural attitudes and narrates social change,” said Sarah Hyndman, graphic designer and author of the book “Why Fonts Matter.”

Hyndman has spent over 20 years studying fonts and what meanings they portray. She said certain fonts emit emotions while others display characteristics like power or strength. Hyndman also acknowledges that people associate fonts with the messages that are written.

For example, Fraktur is an old style of blackletter font used on Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and early Nazi letterheads. Because of this, Hyndman said this typeface can often be associated with racism or bigotry.

In fact, these accusations were made against Chet Hanks, son of Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks, in March of this year. He began receiving backlash on Twitter due to his new clothing line entitled “White Boy Summer.” The clothing is decorated with the phrase in a blackletter font that some Twitter users say closely resembles the Fraktur font used by Nazis.

In a video posted to Instagram, Hanks denies any racism associated with the clothing line.

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New High-Speed Propulsion System Paves Way for Hypersonic Flight up to Mach 16

We humans have a wonderful ability to keep developing, innovating, and engineering bigger, better, and faster contraptions. Close to Earth, we’ve been soaring through the skies in airplanes since 1903 thanks to the Wright brothers, and we’ve been launching spacecraft into space since 1957 when the Soviet Union rocketed the Sputnik satellite above our heads.

So why not try even further, and even faster using less energy and fuel? How does a flight from New York to Los Angeles in a mere 30 minutes instead of six hours spent sitting next to a stranger in cramped conditions sound? This may soon be possible thanks to a team of engineers from the University of Central Florida.

The team discovered a way of stabilizing detonation for hypersonic propulsion by creating a hypersonic reaction chamber for jet propulsions.

This breakthrough allows for a potential way to develop, and integrate ultra-high-speed detonation technology that allows for hypersonic propulsion, and advanced power systems, as the team explained in its study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

They’re not the only ones working on such technology. For example, in late 2020 China was testing a hypersonic jet engine that’s able to go 16 times the speed of sound in a one-of-a-kind wind tunnel in Beijing. If this jet engine, called sodramjet, was used, you’d be able to travel anywhere on Earth in just two hours. 

Other agencies, companies, and governments are focusing their energy on the future of hypersonic flight, not only for fast commercial travel across the world but to also improve how spacecraft engines launch up into space.

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American Medical Association Rejects “Equality” and “Meritocracy” In Just-Released “Racial Justice” and “Equity” Strategic Plan

While you weren’t watching, the American Medical Association surrendered to Critical Race Theory activism, rejecting “equality” and “meritocracy” as goals of medical education, and insisting the Critical Race Theory be a central part of medical education. While the AMA does not run the health care system, it is hugely influential and the radicalization of the organization is a precursor to pushing discriminatory “equity” programs deeper into medical schools and health care itself.

The American Medical Association on May 11, 2021, released its “first strategic plan dedicated to embedding racial justice and advancing health equity.” The President of the AMA also released a statement supporting the plan.

The AMA press release cites the history leading up to this Strategic Plan:

ORIGINS OF STRATEGIC PLAN

The origins of this strategic plan date back to the AMA’s Annual House of Delegates meeting in June of 2018. In this meeting, the time-limited Health Equity Task Force—appointed by the chair of the AMA Board of Trustees—presented to the AMA House of Delegates Board Report 33, A-18, a “Plan for Continued Progress Toward Health Equity D-180.981 (PDF).”

In April of 2019, the AMA launched the AMA Center for Health Equity with the hiring of its first Chief Health Equity Officer.

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Judge orders IRS to reveal if it criminally investigated Clinton Foundation, citing records ‘gap’

AU.S. Tax Court judge has ordered the Internal Revenue Service to reveal if it criminally investigated the Clinton Foundation, directing the agency to cure a mysterious “gap” in its records in the case.

Most of the proceedings in the case involving the Clinton Foundation and the whistleblowers Lawrence W. Doyle and John F. Moynihan have been sealed, but U.S. Tax Court Judge David Gustafson authorized the release of an April 22 ruling to Just the News this week.

In it, Gustafson remanded the case back to the IRS Whistleblower Office (WO), saying the agency’s claim there was no criminal investigation against the Clinton Foundation “was not supported by the administrative record and thus constituted an abuse of discretion.”

“The WO must further investigate to determine whether CI [criminal investigative division] proceeded with an investigation based on petitioners’ information and collected proceeds,” the judge ruled. “… It seems clear we should remand the case to the WO so that it can explore this gap.”

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