In a weird case of life imitating art, the country of Wakanda - established in #Marvel canon as the homeland of King T'Challa aka Black Panther - has been struck from the list of approved free trade agreement partners with the United States Department of Agriculture, or USDA.

Looking at Justin Trudeau's latest scandal. I started wondering about cultural appropriation, and how each region around the world thinks about things differently.

How do you lampoon an election that already routinely veers into absurd territory? That’s a challenge that Trevor Noah, the host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, faces nightly, as he discusses an election cycle of scandals, leaks, bigotry, and fear-mongering—a cycle where even the most unprecedented happenings have become mundane. A South African television and radio host and comedian, Noah has been the host of The Daily Show since 2015. Being the child of a Xhosa mother and Swiss-German father, his childhood in Johannesburg under apartheid’s Immorality Act had a large impact on his life and future in comedy. This is explained in his autobiographical comedy book Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, which become a #1 New York Times Bestseller and named one of the best books of the year after being published in 2016. Noah's mixed-race ancestry, his experiences growing up in Soweto, and his observations about race and ethnicity are leading themes in his comedy. His typical humor genres include political/news satire, deadpan, and black, insult, and observational comedy. This he carried over to The Daily Show after the retirement of his predecessor and one of his comedic influences Jon Stewart, integrating political and ethnic humor.

Extremism and all the other -isms that exist out there are not usually pretty things. They instigate us, embroil us, and fuel us with unhealthy emotions: for most of us, rage (at the idiocy of the fundamental ideal) and sadness mixed in with a little bit of fear (would be classified as the healthy response, by most psychologists).

These are some very dark times indeed for El Paso, Texas, and our thoughts and prayers definitely go out to all who have been affected by the shooting at the Walmart there. We could discuss the shooter, and we could discuss his motives, but above all else, the man is a coward for killing 20 innocent lives and injuring many more. We probably shouldn't give this man the notoriety he craves for this terrible act. On the other hand, one of the things we could also discuss would be the acts of heroism we saw during this horrific incident. Here are some examples of how the human spirit cannot be quashed even in the most difficult of times:

Over a decade ago, Jinger Duggar’s father and mother, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, propped themselves up as the paragon of conservative Christian parents by showcasing their family’s sheltered lifestyle on TV. It was the perfect medium to sell their specific brand of fundamentalist Christianity to the masses: they got to decide which aspects of their lives were filmed, and editing could be used to cut out anything they didn’t want their viewers to see.

My parent's house in El Paso, Texas, the house I grew up in, is a few blocks away from the border between the United States and Mexico. From the rooftop of that house, you can see Ciudad Juárez. In particular, you can see El Monumento a la Mexicanidad, a now iconic monument dedicated to Mexican nationals often referred to as "La X." From many rooftops of the houses closest to the border and many other rooftops in the vicinity, the borderlines are blurred, juxtaposed with one another, but also merging into one, separated merely by rock, water, and metal.

I recently discovered something pretty crazy when I was randomly exploring the Internet. Apparently Mickey Mouse is already public domain in Canada. I know some of you think what does this matter? Who cares?

What’s all the fuss about cultural appropriation? Is Disney committing this offense by retelling the story of the Little Mermaid with a black protagonist?

I just got done celebrating the fourth of July, but before the comments of coonery start... I do understand my people did not achieve freedom until June 19th, 1865.

The United States is the land of the free, an excellent place. If you ask anyone who is not a 'cis-hetero male.'

Mike Pence has once announced, without irony, that “Christians are the most persecuted people in the world.” While I could write a 5000-word article on how much utter nonsense that statement is, this is not the subject of the article you’re reading now. Even now I must put bridles on the controversial things I want to say, because I bet many of the readers here are Christians. But am I going to promise that you are not going to be offended by the arguments I write? No. That would not be an honest partaking of such sensitive topics.