read | Chris Aldrich

👓 Reasons for Using Avatar Privacy | Code by Der Mundschenk & Cie.

Read Reasons for Using Avatar Privacy (Code by Der Mundschenk & Cie.)

In what way are avatars a privacy risk? To display an avatar image, you publish an encrypted version (MD5) of the e-mail address in the gravatar’s image URL. Gravatar.com then decides if there is an avatar image to deliver, otherwise the default image is delivered. The default image’s address is also part of the overall gravatar …

👓 Avatar Privacy | WordPress.org

Read Avatar Privacy by Peter Putzer, Johannes Freudendahl (WordPress.org)

Avatars from Gravatar.com are great, but they come with certain privacy implications. You as site admin may already know this, but your visitors and users probably don’t. Avatar Privacy can help to improve the privacy situation by making some subtle changes to the way avatars are displayed on your site.

The plugin works without changing your theme files if you use a modern theme, and it does support (simple) multisite installations. It requires at least PHP 5.6 and WordPress 4.9. For the plugin to do anything for you, you need to visit the discussion settings page in the WordPress admin area and save the new settings. Please note that the plugin does not provide an options page of its own, it rather adds to the existing discussion settings page.

🎧 The Daily: “Charm City,” Part 3: The Lure of the Streets | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: Part 3 of ‘Charm City’: The Lure of the Streets by Sabrina Tavernise from nytimes.com

What happened to the generation caught between a crack epidemic that consumed their neighborhoods and the aggressive police tactics meant to fix the problem?

Nook spent the first few years of his life in an affluent suburb. But when he returned to Baltimore, he became part of a young generation caught between the crack epidemic and the aggressive police tactics meant to fix the problem.

For the past two days, we’ve been bringing you the story of the life and death of Lavar Montray Douglas, known as Nook. He was 18 years old when he was shot dead by a police officer in Baltimore in 2016.

In Part 3, we look at Nook’s childhood. He spent the first few years of his life with an aunt in an upper-middle-class home outside Baltimore, taking piano lessons and going to church every week. Yesterday, we learned that Nook’s mother, Toby Douglas, kept returning to Baltimore. The same thing happened to Nook.

We go to Nook’s Baltimore, to his corner on Calhoun Street and Pratt Street. Some of his friends are still there, and we talk to them about Nook’s life. He was ambitious, they say. A leader. His mother was proud of that.

Everybody was talking about the Baltimore police officers who had just been on trial, accused of stealing from drug dealers. You see, they said, we were right. The cops are robbers. We said this all along, but nobody believed us.

Suddenly, two police officers pull up, and we encounter something that seems to be emblematic of the changes in the Baltimore Police Department.

If you’d like to start from the beginning, here are Part 1 and Part 2.

🎧 The Daily: “Charm City,” Part 2: The Legacy of Zero-Tolerance Policing | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: Part 2 of ‘Charm City’: The Legacy of Zero-Tolerance Policing by Sabrina Tavernise from nytimes.com

How did trust between the police and the people in Baltimore collapse within the span of three generations?

Yesterday, we started telling you the story of Lavar Montray Douglas, known as Nook, an 18-year-old in Baltimore who was killed by the police in the spasm of violence that began after Freddie Gray died from injuries sustained while in police custody.

In Part 2, we visit Nook’s mother, Lashanda Douglas, known as Toby, in the house she moved into after her son was killed. She sits on the floor of her bedroom, partially covered by a large pile of clean clothes. She is grieving, and folding them and putting them away is soothing. We learn about her past. She graduated from high school with honors. She fled Baltimore to escape a bad boyfriend. But the city eventually lured her back.

We’ll also go back in time, to the Baltimore of Nook’s grandmother and great-grandmother, of flower pots and tidy blocks, when men were still part of families and middle-class jobs were plentiful. We’ll see that relations with the police weren’t always bad. But job loss and drugs tore through the city like plagues. And the policing idea of zero tolerance, transplanted from New York City, created an entire generation of young men with criminal records.

Every day this week, we’ll bring you a new chapter in Nook’s life and his family’s search for answers about his death. If you’d like to start from the beginning, here’s Part 1.

🎧 Introducing ‘Charm City,’ a 5-Part Audio Series from ‘The Daily’ | New York Times

Listened to Introducing ‘Charm City,’ a 5-Part Audio Series from ‘The Daily’ by Sabrina Tavernise from nytimes.com

A year after the killing of Freddie Gray, a teenager in Baltimore was fatally shot by the police. This is the story of his life and death, and of a grieving family looking for answers.

[Read a transcript of Part 1 of the series.]

As soon as I heard Davetta Parker’s voice, I knew I had to meet her. Her grandson Lavar Montray Douglas, known as Nook, was among seven young people from one high school in Baltimore who were killed in the spasm of violence that shook the city after the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died of a severe spinal cord injury while in police custody.

I cold-called her. She was sitting at her desk in a Baltimore public library. She said, “I think God sent you to me.” She said that she had so many questions about the death of her grandson, who had been shot by a police officer, and that she needed someone to help investigate, because the police never did. She said that she had written letters to news channels and newspapers, but that no one had written back. And there I was on the phone.

My colleague Lynsea Garrison and I spent four months examining Nook’s case. It took us on a journey from a quiet back room in the central library, where we first met Ms. Parker and her daughter Lashanda Douglas, known as Toby, into the streets of Baltimore, to drug corners, living rooms and grand homes in the county.

We wanted to tell his story for the simple reason that events like these are rarely told, even though they have become ordinary. Nook and his friends — many of whom have also been killed — were typical for homicide victims in Baltimore. They all had records with serious crimes. But they were boys. Most hadn’t even turned 18. And the deeper question in our minds was: How did things get like this for them?

You’ll meet Ms. Parker and Ms. Douglas in Part 1. Every day this week, we’ll bring you a new chapter in the life of Nook and his family’s search for answers about his death.

👓 Why Did I Teach My Son to Speak Russian? | New Yorker

Read Why Did I Teach My Son to Speak Russian? (The New Yorker)

When bilingualism isn’t obviously valuable, you have to decide what you think of the language.

A nice essay that focuses on the personal side of raising bilingual children. In my experience needing to have a reason to speak a language is very important. Often around the age of three (or the beginning of daycare and/or school) children who realize they don’t have to speak a language will give it up (and often flatly refuse) as they begin to become more broadly socialized. It definitely helps if they’ve got a peer group who primarily speaks the language as well.

I quite liked the parts about a language “filling one up” or the ways in which language was implicated with attention. These are intriguing observations.