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How the racism he experienced as a kid inspired him to become a media mogul and advocate.

September is Hispanic Heritage Month, a time to celebrate Latino culture and people like Alex who work to infuse it into everyday American life.

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"When I was a kid, it was not popular to be Mexican," says Alex Nogales.

"Mexican restaurants went by 'Spanish cafes.' That sounded better," he laughs. "But it was really a Mexican restaurant that sold tacos!"

Alex is the founder, president, and CEO of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, which is dedicated to increasing visibility for Latinos in media and entertainment.

Photo courtesy of NHMC.

Alex's desire to shine a spotlight on Latino culture stems in part from the discrimination and ignorance he faced growing up.

"I am first-generation, born in this nation. My parents were immigrants from Mexico. We were farm laborers, which meant that we worked the fruits and vegetables in seasons," Alex says.

Photo via iStock.

He and his family would start harvesting cotton in California's Imperial Valley, near the Mexican border. When school was over, they would go to Delano for grapes, then to Manteca for tomatoes, to Northern California for plums and peaches, then back to Manteca before heading back home. They were away from their home in Calexico for six months at a time. Alex enjoyed traveling and meeting people from different walks of life. "But it was a difficult life in many ways," he says.

"Mexicans were not treated very well by the ranchers," he says. "There were signs up and down the state that said, 'No dogs or Mexicans allowed.'"

Today, Alex works to get more — and more accurate — representation of Latino culture into the mainstream.

In fact, he created the National Hispanic Media Coalition to give people a vehicle to do just that.

"It took me years to get over those kinds of discriminatory comments and prejudices," Alex says. But as an adult, when he began work as a writer and producer, he encountered more of the same thing. "I saw who got the jobs and who didn't and why," he says. "A lot of it had to do with, who were people culturally close to?"

[rebelmouse-image 19530061 dam="1" original_size="640x427" caption="Alex and "How to Get Away With Murder" star Karla Souza at the NHMC's 2017 Impact Awards Gala, where Hispanic and Latino actors and actresses are celebrated for their work in the arts. Photo via NHMC/Flickr." expand=1]Alex and "How to Get Away With Murder" star Karla Souza at the NHMC's 2017 Impact Awards Gala, where Hispanic and Latino actors and actresses are celebrated for their work in the arts. Photo via NHMC/Flickr.

In places where Latino representation is sparse, people sometimes believe inaccurate, harmful stereotypes about Latinos because they've never personally experienced life within the Latino community. People rely on media for real portrayals of people who are different from them, which is why it's so important to Alex that Latinos are characterized correctly.

The importance of visibility is also why Alex chose Los Angeles to live, work, and champion his mission.

More than any other city in the United States, Los Angeles is where you can get an accurate understanding of what the Latino community actually looks like.

[rebelmouse-image 19530062 dam="1" original_size="640x481" caption="Photo by William Garrett/Flickr." expand=1]Photo by William Garrett/Flickr.

"Our community is no different from other immigrants that have come to this country," Alex says. Individual roles vary so widely that any stereotype is bound to be inaccurate. "We're doctors. We're lawyers. We're cops," he says. He ticks off the names: "The head of the state Senate is a Latino. The head of the Assembly is a Latino. The attorney general is a Latino," he says.

"If you really want to know more, engage us," Alex says. "Go to festivities — any of them that occur during Hispanic Heritage Month."

Visibility is important year-round, but the events held during Hispanic Heritage Month are a great opportunity to learn more about and celebrate Latino culture.

[rebelmouse-image 19530063 dam="1" original_size="640x428" caption="A dancer at a Hispanic cultural event in downtown Los Angeles called the Blessing of the Animals. Photo by Ray_LAC/Flickr." expand=1]A dancer at a Hispanic cultural event in downtown Los Angeles called the Blessing of the Animals. Photo by Ray_LAC/Flickr.

In his view, the celebration of Hispanic and Latino cultures is something to be shared among everyone.

"I like it when we have people outside our own community coming to our own celebrations," he says. "You know, anything that is ethnic is to be celebrated. The food is great, the cultural things are great, the people are great. And how are you gonna not like something that's happy?"

In Los Angeles, SoCal Honda is helping people celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. To find out how and where to participate (or to get some inspiration for your own town's celebrations!) follow them on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Pop Culture

Artist uses AI to create ultra realistic portraits of celebrities who left us too soon

What would certain icons look like if nothing had happened to them?

Bored Panda

Mercury would be 76 today.

Some icons have truly left this world too early. It’s a tragedy when anyone doesn’t make it to see old age, but when it happens to a well-known public figure, it’s like a bit of their art and legacy dies with them. What might Freddie Mercury have created if he were granted the gift of long life? Bruce Lee? Princess Diana?

Their futures might be mere musings of our imagination, but thanks to a lot of creativity (and a little tech) we can now get a glimpse into what these celebrities might have looked like when they were older.

Alper Yesiltas, an Istanbul-based lawyer and photographer, created a photography series titled “As If Nothing Happened,” which features eerily realistic portraits of long gone celebrities in their golden years. To make the images as real looking as possible, Yesiltas incorporated various photo editing programs such as Adobe Lightroom and VSCO, as well as the AI photo-enhancing software Remini.

“The hardest part of the creative process for me is making the image feel ‘real’ to me,” Yesiltas wrote about his passion project. “The moment I like the most is when I think the image in front of me looks as if it was taken by a photographer.”

Yesiltas’ meticulousness paid off, because the results are uncanny.

Along with each photo, Yesiltas writes a bittersweet message “wishing” how things might have gone differently … as if nothing happened.
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American Cancer Society
American Cancer Society
Science

Meet the researcher shining a light on the “white lens” of medical AI in skin cancer prevention

How we can create equity for all communities?

All images provided by Adewole Adamson

It begins with more inclusive conversations at a patient level

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Adewole Adamson, MD, of the University of Texas, Austin, aims to create more equity in health care by gathering data from more diverse populations by using artificial intelligence (AI), a type of machine learning. Dr. Adamson’s work is funded by the American Cancer Society (ACS), an organization committed to advancing health equity through research priorities, programs and services for groups who have been marginalized.

Melanoma became a particular focus for Dr. Adamson after meeting Avery Smith, who lost his wife—a Black woman—to the deadly disease.

melanoma, melanoma for dark skin Avery Smith (left) and Adamson (sidenote)

This personal encounter, coupled with multiple conversations with Black dermatology patients, drove Dr. Adamson to a concerning discovery: as advanced as AI is at detecting possible skin cancers, it is heavily biased.

To understand this bias, it helps to first know how AI works in the early detection of skin cancer, which Dr. Adamson explains in his paper for the New England Journal of Medicine (paywall). The process uses computers that rely on sets of accumulated data to learn what healthy or unhealthy skin looks like and then create an algorithm to predict diagnoses based on those data sets.

This process, known as supervised learning, could lead to huge benefits in preventive care.

After all, early detection is key to better outcomes. The problem is that the data sets don’t include enough information about darker skin tones. As Adamson put it, “everything is viewed through a ‘white lens.’”

“If you don’t teach the algorithm with a diverse set of images, then that algorithm won’t work out in the public that is diverse,” writes Adamson in a study he co-wrote with Smith (according to a story in The Atlantic). “So there’s risk, then, for people with skin of color to fall through the cracks.”

Tragically, Smith’s wife was diagnosed with melanoma too late and paid the ultimate price for it. And she was not an anomaly—though the disease is more common for White patients, Black cancer patients are far more likely to be diagnosed at later stages, causing a notable disparity in survival rates between non-Hispanics whites (90%) and non-Hispanic blacks (66%).

As a computer scientist, Smith suspected this racial bias and reached out to Adamson, hoping a Black dermatologist would have more diverse data sets. Though Adamson didn’t have what Smith was initially looking for, this realization ignited a personal mission to investigate and reduce disparities.

Now, Adamson uses the knowledge gained through his years of research to help advance the fight for health equity. To him, that means not only gaining a wider array of data sets, but also having more conversations with patients to understand how socioeconomic status impacts the level and efficiency of care.

“At the end of the day, what matters most is how we help patients at the patient level,” Adamson told Upworthy. “And how can you do that without knowing exactly what barriers they face?”

american cancer society, skin cacner treatment"What matters most is how we help patients at the patient level."https://www.kellydavidsonstudio.com/

The American Cancer Society believes everyone deserves a fair and just opportunity to prevent, find, treat, and survive cancer—regardless of how much money they make, the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, gender identity, their disability status, or where they live. Inclusive tools and resources on the Health Equity section of their website can be found here. For more information about skin cancer, visit cancer.org/skincancer.

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It's just a 2-minute video of someone mending a hole in a sweater, but people can't look away

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The mesmerizing lost art of darning knit fabric.

For most of human history, people had to make their own clothing by hand, and sewing skills were subsequently passed down from generation to generation. Because clothing was so time-consuming and labor-intensive to make, people also had to know how to repair clothing items that got torn or damaged in some way.

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Nurse turns inappropriate things men say in the delivery room into ‘inspirational’ art

"Can you move to the birthing ball so I can sleep in the bed?"

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Holly the delivery nurse.

After working six years as a labor and delivery nurse Holly, 30, has heard a lot of inappropriate remarks made by men while their partners are in labor. “Sometimes the moms think it’s funny—and if they think it’s funny, then I’ll laugh with them,” Holly told TODAY Parents. “But if they get upset, I’ll try to be the buffer. I’ll change the subject.”

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“Some partners are hard to live up to!” she jokingly captioned the video.

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