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Jenny McCarthy’s Autism Charity Has Helped Its Board Members Make Money Off Dangerous, Discredited Ideas (Anna Merlan for Jezebel)
By most available metrics, Generation Rescue’s footprint in the world of families affected by autism is large, as are their ambitions. They have 39,000 followers on Facebook. A conference they organized each year through 2018, the Autism Education Summit, promised to have, as they put it in their tax forms, “the most in-depth and current lectures on autism treatment and care.” (It’s unclear how many people typically attended the summit, but in 2016, the organization said it cost $357,794 to put on and bought in about $152,945 in revenue, meaning it lost money.)
The Peculiar Sheen of America by Amtrak (Caity Weaver for the New York Times)
Contrary to multiple acquaintances’ declarations that I would encounter “some real weirdos” on the train, the first person I met on board my first sleeper car after boarding the train in Penn Station was a man in a sparkly cardigan and leather pants who breezily identified himself as “a prophet,” which is perhaps the world’s second-oldest profession. And forgive me if I find nothing “weird” about being gainfully employed under a supervisor with the kind of multinational name recognition God has.
‘Women Can Be Required To Wear Something That’s Painful.’ (Victoria Namkung for Longreads)
That year especially I experienced some surprises, I might call them unpleasant surprises, having conversations with men I knew, even friends and family members. I was struck by how some of that language was weirdly gendered in terms of, when is it okay for a woman to be ambitious? What kind of behavior is perfectly fine for a male candidate but seems untrustworthy or contrived when coming from a woman? Someone said one of the reasons they liked a different candidate was he could be a disheveled mess. Do you think a woman candidate could get away with even half of that?
Inside Airbnb’s Guerilla War Against Local Government (Paris Martineau for Wired)
Historically, other online rental services, such as Booking.com, HomeAway, and VRBO, have not collected these taxes in many places. In the past two years, HomeAway and VRBO have begun collecting some occupancy taxes in a handful of areas—sometimes using their own version of a VCA. Booking.com does not offer any occupancy-tax collection services, compounding the revenue drain for municipalities. Booking.com’s global communications manager, Kim Soward, says the company pays all required taxes. Expedia Group—owner of HomeAway, VRBO, VacationRentals, and other sites—did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The Trap House-Busting Vigilante of Pine Ridge Reservation (Rebecca Bengal for Topic)
On her phone she shows me the comments and emoji hearts and teardrops in reply to her post about Kayla. Texts and DMs flash too, from people who are in similar predicaments. They message from down the road, from elsewhere on Pine Ridge or on the Rosebud and Cheyenne River reservations in South Dakota; from Montana; from Florida, at all times of day and night, asking the woman they know as Mama Julz for help.
Photo: Andy Morffew