Friday News: Frederick Douglass, outdating iOS apps, the beauty of self-confidence

JanetPublishing Newsapps / Black History Month / Frederick Douglass / gender / History / iOS / photography / Race2 Comments

How Frederick Douglass Harnessed the Power of Portraiture to Reframe Blackness in America – If you’ve missed some of our latest national embarrassments, check out The Root‘s coverage of the Trump -Frederick Douglass snafu before reading the above essay on Douglass and 19th C U.S. portraiture. At least it’s an opportunity to bring more attention to Black History Month, which the U.S. and Canada celebrate in February. Although most widely known for his Autobiography and his abolitionist work, Douglass was also a big fan of photography, and he used the new medium to re-present both himself as an individual and race more generally in a more “objective” way. He was more photographed than Abraham Lincoln.

In today’s image-saturated world, 160 photographs seems rather unremarkable. But in the 19th century, that figure was enough to earn Douglass the distinction of being the most photographed American of his time. Army officer George Custer came close with 155; Abraham Lincoln only made it to 126. Worldwide, only a handful of British celebrities and royals would top him. . . .

He also believed deeply in its objectivity. “For Douglass, photography was the lifeblood of being able to be seen and not caricatured, to be represented and not grotesque, to be seen as fully human and not as an object or chattel to be bought and sold,” says Celeste-Marie Bernier, co-author of Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American (2015).

Photography was the perfect tool for a man trying to rewrite racial prejudices in the United States, and Douglass sought out every opportunity to be captured. With each portrait, he could present America with an additional image of blackness that contradicted the prevailing racist stereotypes. – Artsy

Future iOS update will shut the door on apps from the dawn of the smartphone – If you’re running an old version of an old app or an older version of the iPhone, you might want to take note of the warning that they may be wholly unsupported in iOS 11.

Beta builds of iOS 10.3, the first of which was issued last week, generate warning messages when you try to run older 32-bit apps. The message, originally discovered by PSPDFKit CEO and app developer Peter Steinberger, warns that the apps “will not work with future versions of iOS” and that the app must be updated by its developer in order to continue running. The apps still run in iOS 10.3, but it seems likely that iOS 11 will drop support for them entirely.

Though the error message doesn’t explicitly mention the app’s 32-bit or 64-bit support, it’s definitely only older 32-bit apps that trigger the warning. Similar messages that did explicitly mention 64-bit support were present in the betas of iOS 10.0, but they were removed in the final release of the software. Apple has required 64-bit support for all new app submissions since February of 2015 and all app update submissions since June 2015, so any apps that are still throwing this error haven’t been touched by their developer in at least a year and a half (developers could add 64-bit support as early as 2013, but most of them opted not to until it became a requirement). – Ars Technica

7 Young People on Their Views of Gender – A really lovely photo essay by Annie Tritt, in collaboration with seven teens (well, six out of seven are teens), who offer their perspectives on gender and identity. I really hope we’re finally moving away en masse from the idea that gender is a fixed, essential, binary concept.

About two years ago, I began photographing transgender and “gender-expansive” children and young adults in the United States and Europe. I wanted to ask this question: “Who are we beyond ideas tied to our gender?” The answer is critical not only to the transgender community, I believe, but to everyone.

In the younger participants, I have found self-assuredness and confidence; they are clear about who they are. In the older youths — especially the nonbinary ones who identify as both genders, or neither — I see a willingness to break free from boxes society puts us into. In all of them, there is creativity and compassion for peers and strangers alike. – New York Times

Dudeoir Model Breaks the Internet – This guy (well not the real person but a fictional version) so needs to be a Romance novel hero. Please. – Unworthy, via Hooplaha

Janet

isn't sure if she's an average Romance reader, or even an average reader, but a reader she is, enjoying everything from literary fiction to philosophy to history to poetry. Historical Romance was her first love within the genre, but she's fickle and easily seduced by the promise of a good read. She approaches every book with the same hope: that she will be filled from the inside out with something awesome that she didnʼt know, didnʼt think about, or didnʼt feel until that moment. And she's always looking for the next mind-blowing read, so feel free to share any suggestions!

→ Janet