ear Ms. Budig,
I’m writing in response to your recent blog post, Color the World, in which you share the “venomous” rejection of you as the face of body positivity and call it an act of bullying. While I, nor the Yoga and Body Image Coalition I co-founded, wrote the post you were referring to, it was shared by YBIC leader, Elen Bahr, on her “Yoga for Every Body” Facebook page, and due to the strong words you used in a very public blog post to your hundreds of thousands of fans and readers, I feel compelled to publicly respond – not just to address specific points with you personally, but to address them with the general public and, hopefully, help educate people on some key points, and help raise consciousness and elevate the conversation.
The Yoga and Body Image Coalition is a...
Lifestyle
Dear President Obama,
I want to start this letter by thanking you for everything that you have done for this country. Unlike many others, I proudly voted for you in 2008 and 2012, and I had high hopes for the years that came after. And although you’ve done an exceptional job leading our country in many ways, I wanted to take this opportunity to write you an honest open letter about snakes.
Yes, snakes: the long, hairless dogs that have no legs.
If you’re truly the fearless leader who I so proudly elected, I hope with all my heart that you’ll listen to the men and women who both supported and believed in you. So, as a citizen of these United States, I want you to know that snakes are basically living belts that can eat large animals. Instead of walking, they slither across the...
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Dear undrafted free agents,
You’ll soon learn about the one guy in an NFL organization that everybody knows, and it’s not the GM or the head coach. We call him The Turk. When you hear that name, it strikes fear in every player’s heart. It’s almost like one of those wraiths from Lord of the Rings coming to get you. The Turk’s only job is to go around and tell players that the coach wants to see you, and you’d better bring your playbook. As an NFL player, when you hear those words, you know exactly what’s coming next.
I’ve definitely heard those words before. I know exactly what it feels like to be in your shoes — to go into training camp and look around the room trying to figure out which of the guys are going to get released. I’ve been that guy. But I’m writing this because I want...
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Dear Mark,
I read your article in Mint (16 April, mintne.ws/1yudRTC ) and realized that you are in the dark about Net neutrality as much as I am but you have also violated it.
The reason I’m responding to your article is because you mentioned your trip to Chandauli in Alwar district in Rajasthan last year and used the example of the villagers to explain how to connect the disconnected people, who would benefit from free content on the World Wide Web.
I am sure you remember that Digital Empowerment Foundation was your host in Chandauli village where it runs a community information resource centre for the villagers to access the Internet, access content and services through Internet, learn how to access digital content and resources, either free or by paying, but at their own will...
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Dear Mr. Kassam,
On 23rd May 2014, the Imperial College Union voted unanimously to denounce and formalise its stance against Student Rights. As a democratically elected Student Union that is committed to upholding the values of a fair and free society, we view Student Rights’ disproportionate preoccupation with Muslim students to be sensationalist, divisive and counterproductive, and therefore not conducive to freedom of expression on our campus.
Whilst claiming to support equality and democracy on university campuses, your organisation’s lack of transparency as well as its complete lack of any student links highlights serious flaws and contradictions in its approach. Being a project set up by the neoconservative Henry Jackson Society, whose associate director has stated on record...
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Dear Director Johnnetta B. Cole and other staff members of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art,
I am writing to you today with a simple request: take down the pictures of Bill Cosby in your current exhibition Conversations. Remove the portraits of him and the quotes by him, the lines of wall text that make Bill Cosby sound like a kind-hearted family man. Because Bill Cosby, contrary to what the television show had us believe, is not a kind-hearted family man. He is, I believe, a sexual predator and a serial rapist.
I’m not sure if you’ve yet read New York magazine’s cover story this week, in which 35 of the 46 women who’ve publicly alleged that Cosby sexually assaulted them tell their stories. If you haven’t, I urge you to do so immediately. It is a horrifying,...
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Dear Gawker,
So, you removed that post. You know, the one about a married man (whose name we will not be mentioning) trying to score some hot gay sex on the sly, away from his wife’s prying eyes — or maybe with her blessing, we don’t know the terms of their marriage, and neither do you. You have said you’re sorry, SORT OF. You SHOULD be sorry, not that your “apologies” really count at this point, since the story is already out there on the internet, even if you’ve removed it, and you’ve likely done immeasurable damage to him and to his family in the last 24 hours.
While we have made great strides in the world of acceptance for LGBT people, it’s still a sad fact that there are millions of men and women who are, for whatever reason, in the closet. When people like that inflict actual...
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Dear Wikipedia,
I am Philip Roth. I had reason recently to read for the first time the Wikipedia entry discussing my novel “The Human Stain.” The entry contains a serious misstatement that I would like to ask to have removed. This item entered Wikipedia not from the world of truthfulness but from the babble of literary gossip—there is no truth in it at all.
Yet when, through an official interlocutor, I recently petitioned Wikipedia to delete this misstatement, along with two others, my interlocutor was told by the “English Wikipedia Administrator”—in a letter dated August 25th and addressed to my interlocutor—that I, Roth, was not a credible source: “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work,” writes the Wikipedia Administrator—“but we...
2,590
Dear Arundhati,
I'm sorry to have to write a critical letter to you. I very much liked The God of Small Things. I also appreciated your intervention on the nuclear issue. I was impressed on reading in Indian Express that you had decided to donate some royalties to the Dalit Sahitya Academy.
However, when it comes to the issue of "big dams", I can understand the urgency you feel for the people of the valley and the victims of misguided development projects everywhere, but I feel that you're missing many things. There are important questions not only regarding the dam-afflicted but also the drought-afflicted, issues of water for agriculture, and of democracy in people's movements. I would like to share with you some of my experiences, mainly in Maharashtra, on drought and water issues...
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Dear Mr. Marketer:
The Social Web is not your "traffic honey hole."
Yes, we understand you’re just trying to run a business. Yes, we know social media is the biggest marketing opportunity in the history of mankind, and you’re just trying to get your piece of it. Yes, we are aware that social media marketing is endorsed by many top Internet marketers, and they’re making millions off it every day.
But we’d like you to stop, or at least change the way you’re doing it.
We’re not going to give you another self-righteous argument about how you can’t make money with social media. We’re not going to sermonize about the pitfalls of sleazy marketing. We’re not going to tell you you’re ruining opportunities for all of the other marketers out there who are trying to do things the right...
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