Author: Goldpanner

npr:

Quirtina Crittenden was struggling to get a room on Airbnb. She would send a request to a host. Wait. And then get declined.

“The hosts would always come up with excuses like, ‘oh, someone actually just booked it’ or ‘oh, some of my regulars are coming in town, and they’re going to stay there,’” Crittenden said. “But I got suspicious when I would check back like days later and see that those dates were still available.”

In many ways Crittenden, 23, is the target audience for AirBnb. She’s young, likes to travel, and has a good paying job as a business consultant in Chicago. So she started to wonder if it had something to do with her race. Crittenden is African American, and on AirBnb, both hosts and guests are required to have their names and photos prominently displayed on their profiles.

Crittenden shared her frustrations on Twitter with the hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack. She started hearing from lots of friends who had similar experiences.

#AirbnbWhileBlack: How Hidden Bias Shapes The Sharing Economy

Photo caption: After Quirtina Crittenden changed her photo to a cityscape, she says she stopped having problems finding a room on Airbnb.

Photo credit: Quirtina Crittenden

roachpatrol:

do you ever think about how voldemort was 72 when he died? like, this dude spent his whole life trying to figure out immortality. as a wizard he’d probably have made it to 200 if he just ate healthy, got regular exercise, had wizard doctor checkups, whatever. 

and like, the philosopher’s stone existed! no-drawbacks immortality was already a thing, they established this in the first book, nicholas flammel and his wife had been using it for centuries and by all accounts being pretty decent people and not fucked up psycho murder snakes so maybe tom riddle could have just asked very nicely to use it for a little bit, like, before he did a bunch of evil shit?? 

instead, no. he goes and decides the solution to dying is to turn into like nightmare snake hitler, start two civil wars, and croak at an age some muggles don’t even retire at. 

worst villain ever. 

#LOOK IF YOU WANT TO LIVE FOREVER#AND YOU DIE IN A CIVIL WAR YOU INSTIGATED#MAYBE DON’T INSTIGATE A SECOND WAR#THE MINUTE YOU COME BACK TO LIFE#MAYBE GO SIT ON A TROPICAL ISLAND SOMEWHERE#SMELL A FLOWER#WHAT A SHITHEAD

Why for example, does a twenty-two-year-old man pursue a sixteen-year-old adolescent? Because he is stimulated by her? Obviously not. They are at completely different developmental points in life with a dramatic imbalance in their levels of knowledge and experience. He is attracted to power and seeks a partner who will look up to him with awe and allow him to lead her. Of course, he usually tells her the opposite, insisting that he wants to be with her because of how unusually mature and sophisticated she is for her age. He may even compliment her on her sexual prowess and say how much power she has over him, setting up the young victim so that she won’t recognize what is happening to her. Even without a chronological age difference, some abusive men are drawn to women who have less life experience, knowledge, or self-confidence, and who will look up to the man as a teacher or mentor.

Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft (via jolinxo)