Friday News: Apple Watch hates tattoos, reading and shame, images of Black women on tv, and 50 Shades verdict in Texas court
Apple Watch has a problem with tattoos – The revelation that the heart rate monitor in the new Apple watch does not seem to work with certain types of arm tattoos has raised concern that the technology will not work on darker skinned people. USA Today reports that they tested the watch on several African Americans and reported no problems, likely because tattoo ink is not the same thing as melanin.
Shari Lipner, a dermatologist and assistant professor at Weill Cornell, doesn’t believe the watch “would be a problem with African Americans or people with dark skin. This is really a different type of pigment (than) in the tattoos.” . . .
As for people with tattoos, Lipner suggested it would only be an issue if the tattoo is directly below the watch sensors, adding that smartwatch owners with amateur or light-colored tattoos also shouldn’t run into snags. But the darker blue or black inks on some tattoos could interfere with how the sensor reads your heart rate, giving users unusual numbers. –USA Today
Is There Anything One Should Feel Ashamed of Reading? – An interesting piece by James Parker and Charles McGrath on reading and shame. I wonder how the conversation would be different if at least one woman participated, but McGrath touches on the issue of shame emanating from books like Fifty Shades — books, in other words, that make us worry we’ll be caught reading them and judged by other people. Parker discusses the uselessness of “literary shame”:
Also top-down, and equally useless, is false shame, whereby you passive-aggressively apologize for your crummy taste in books: “Oh, I know I should probably read ‘The Goldfinch’ or whatever, like you with your big brain, but what can I say? I like these novelizations of ‘Star Trek’ episodes.” That’s no good either. Get behind your “Star Trek” novelizations. Make the case for them. Say, if you must, that the hasty generic splurge of a sci-fi hack has — by definition! — more of wisdom and rude life in it than any dry Pulitzer Prize winner. –New York Times
Sisters talk TV: ‘Empire,’ ‘Scandal,’ more than guilty pleasures – A good article on a Black feminism panel at Macaslester College and the discussion of so-called “guilty pleasures” like Scandal and Empire, and more specifically, media representations of Black women. According to Multichannel News’s Thomas Umstead, the African American consumer base is worth $1.1. trillion, and more Black women watch television than any other demographic. The panel expressed a refusal to conform to a certain racial and gender narrative, while acknowledging the controversy around certain types of Black female characters currently popular on television:
“I don’t care what White people think of me,” continued Story, on mainstream media’s “politics of race” discussions of Black shows. “I love Empire,” added Blay, but admitted that she understands why some Blacks might not like the show. “I think we’ve been trained to respond to popular images in a certain way. We are not supposed to enjoy anything that is made by the mainstream about Black people.” Morgan pointed out, “I do not want Black women’s problems to always be contentious, misery, trauma and violence — that’s the only way that we fit into an American racial and sexual narrative. If you are going to write an article about the misrepresentation of Black women, then you need to account for the Black female audience that loves the show.” . . .
“We absolutely want representation that represents some aspect of our lives, but the shows we are talking about…aren’t White shows with Black people on them. We are talking about Black shows with Black creators and Black directors,” noted Cooper on Scandal and Murder creator Shonda Rhimes and Mara Brock Akil, the creator of BET’s Being Mary Jane. –Spokesman-Recorder
Arlington woman wins ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ lawsuit – So remember that Texas case regarding the woman who had originally been part of the small Australian company, The Writer’s Coffee Shop, that originally published Fifty Shades? Well, a jury has found that she is due a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the book to Random House. What’s ironic is that Jennifer Pedroza never intended to file suit against her former business partner, until her growing soap business was featured in a local paper, and comments she made led to Amanda Hayward issuing a C&D to Pedroza and her partner, who had also been employed at TWCS.
The jury deliberated for about 10 hours over three days before determining on Thursday that Pedroza was defrauded by Amanda Hayward, her Australian partner in an e-publishing business that originally released what would become a New York Times bestseller.
State District Judge Susan McCoy will determine how much Pedroza eventually gets after an accounting of the financial records connected to book sales is completed. Records on the royalties have been sealed, but earlier estimates were that her share could be $10 million to $20 million. –Star-Telegram
