Disturbing video has emerged showing a black man directing a string of racial slurs at an Asian NYPD officer during unrest in Manhattan's Washington Square Park over the weekend.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Wednesday that she will grant one-on-one interviews to mark the two-year anniversary of her inauguration solely to journalists of color, saying she has been struck by the “overwhelmingly” white press corps in Chicago.

“I ran to break up the status quo that was failing so many,” Lightfoot, who is Black, tweeted, also issuing a detailed letter to City Hall reporters on her decision. “That isn’t just in City Hall. It’s a shame that in 2021, the City Hall press corps is overwhelmingly White in a city where more than half of the city identifies as Black, Latino, AAPI or Native American.”

While the move isn’t unprecedented in recent years, it drew fierce scrutiny among the city’s press corps and beyond with members of the media quickly taking Lightfoot to task for her decision.

A mall Santa dropped the hammer on a little boy who asked him for a Nerf gun for Christmas — telling the bawling kid he wouldn’t bring him the toy.

The politically correct Kris Kringle was caught on video asking the child what he wanted for the holiday, according to a Facebook post by the boy’s mother.

The boy apparently mentioned a gun, because the Santa could be heard replying, “No, no guns.’’

When the kid’s mom, who was standing nearby, piped in just to be clear, “Nerf gun,’’ the not-so-jolly ol’ St. Nick was still having none of it.

San Francisco, it turns out, is not all flowers and gentle people. Livable California, the statewide anti-density organization with headquarters in the city, recently used a homophobic slur about my coworker and me. In a July 9 response to someone else’s tweet on the topic of housing, Isaiah Madison, a member of the board of directors of Livable California, wrote:

"I don’t get paid by Livable California Mr. Anonymous. I fucking wish I did though lol. Maybe Abundant Housing can hire me like they did the other brown &black faggots to push for new housing on vacant parcels of land/strip malls once y’all get the fuck off of my community’s homes[.]"

Why are so many of these ‘Hot Guy’ Instagram feeds that are not only all white but all cisgender and all buff? What does it say about standards of beauty in the gay community?

As so often happens, a friend forwarded me a picture of your typical hot, white, cisgender, muscled, light-eyed Instagram hunk featured on a ‘Hot Guys’ page. As I scrolled down, I was reminded of #HoscosGate: a sea of beautiful, stunning white men, clearly targeted towards gay men. There were no BAME men that I could see, and I scrolled as far back as 2017. I reached out to the page, with a polite, “Hi There [name of page] great page, I have a question, I hope you don’t mind. Why do you not post pictures featuring men of colour?” I was blocked. I sent variations of that message to 25 Instagram pages, and all either replied or blocked me. There were two consistent replies: the first being that guys pay to be featured; the second that men of colour ‘do not like to be featured’. When pressed on that I was told that ‘they don’t want to be on gay pages’.

The coronavirus pandemic has been a shock to our systems — political, social, and economic. As governments scramble to adequately respond to outbreaks of COVID-19, mandates to physically isolate ourselves from each other are impacting workers in vulnerable positions. Meanwhile, celebrities are hosting online sing-alongs, some politically powerful people have allegedly exploited the moment for financial gain, and the rich continue to deliver mind-blowing indications that their concern in a global crisis is first and foremost only for themselves.

It’s all an important reminder of something many of us felt even before this moment: The rich and powerful will not save us.

President Donald Trump, of all people, exhibited a rare display of class analysis when asked about the elite getting to the front of the line for tests, saying at a White House press conference Wednesday, “That’s the story of life.”

Trump, a poignant embodiment of the out-of-touch elite, is in this case absolutely correct. Disparities and inequities are nothing new. In this moment of crisis, we will have the chance to bear witness to how the fundamental imbalances of our world protect some and victimize others.

Much has been written about incels, mainly in the context of toxic masculinity, far-right radicalisation, and mental health. But very little has been written about the tiny proportion of gay men among them, and it’s worth asking: who are they?

This pattern was identified by Reddit user zanmato1109, who also happens to be a PhD candidate, and summarised in a mini-essay: The New Internalised Homophobia, or, Revenge of the Gay Incels.

“Repeated rejection leads some young men to concoct an unflattering, two-dimensional caricature of the group that spurned them, whether it’s women or gays” – @zanmato1109

Although he says he wouldn’t use the term ‘incel’ had he written it again today, the insightful post drew key parallels between the gay and straight men reframing their personal issues through the lens of a broader worldview. He tells me he noticed this happened often in the ‘gaybros’ community, which “started off with an internalised homophobia vibe” – “these posts complaining about the state of the gay community were written by guys who didn’t do well in the bar scene, and whose dates never turned into anything”. He found that their anger turned into a “moralising stance,” which frustrated him. “It was disheartening to read what were essentially homophobic, right-wing talking points repurposed as handful of disaffected gays’ wrongheaded coping mechanisms.”

In the same way that incel forums have become hotbeds of far-right ideology and misogyny, these gay incels often share similarly right-wing views and a hatred towards the potential partners rejecting them. “I don’t think we’re wrong to see some kind of parallel,” he continues. “In both cases, repeated rejection leads some young men to concoct an unflattering, two-dimensional caricature of the group that spurned them, whether it’s women or gays. In both cases, part of their attack is some kind of moralising about sexual promiscuity – particularly in online spaces.”

When you’re surrounded by people, you can still be isolated.

You might be in a busy bar, beer in hand, but it can feel like the loneliest place in the world.

When Damian and I started our podcast MenTalkHealth, we didn’t have a clear intent on what we wanted to do.

What came out of it was the older LGBTI people in Brighton came to us and said it was amazing. These were people that weren’t going out but they still wanted to listen to gay voices.

The majority of gay men I know are always busy, but they often don’t make any actual connections. Grindr and Scruff aren’t real. You might meet people going out to bars, with all its drinking and drugs, but you won’t find real connections there.

2. "They've forced me into having anal sex several times and said that 'black people can handle the pain better.'"

Some white guys say that they don't like 'dark guys' (this term is awful) because of taste or because their dicks are too big for them. Some friends have hooked up with me thinking only about the chance to see a big dick or because they imagine that black guys are better in bed. They've played with my hair and 'complimented' me on my sexual performance because I'm black. They've also forced me into having anal sex several times and said that 'black people can handle the pain better.' —Rafael Porto, 25 years old.

An unidentified teacher at Roberts Middle School in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio gave out a controversial assignment recently. Now many people are criticizing both the teacher and school for allowing it.

The title of the assignment was: Whom to Leave Behind.

To do the assignment, students had to rank 12 different people based on who was most to least deserving to live. In the scenario, Earth is about to destruct, and a spaceship only has eight seats.