Alas, a Blog

1. How the first liberal Supreme Court in a generation could reshape America – Vox
   The possibility of effectively reducing gerrymandering is especially on my mind at the moment.
2. The GOP created the “rigged vote” myth.
   Trump really isn’t doing anything but taking seriously what the GOP, in a racist attempt to limit Democratic voters’ participation, has been saying for years.
3. Airbnb Probably Isn’t Driving Rents Up Much, At Least Not Yet | FiveThirtyEight
4. Trump is not an Act of God
   Trump is the logical outcome of everything the GOP has been telling its base for years.
5. Clinton’s Alinsky Problem—and Ours – Better Angels
   Surprisingly interesting article about Clinton’s college writing about Alinsky.
6. A Plan That Can Help Millions : Democracy Journal
   “Hillary Clinton’s new plan for poor people isn’t huge, but it’s reasonable and practicable and would improve millions of lives.”
7. How False Narratives of Margaret Sanger Are Being Used to Shame Black Women – Rewire
8. Bike lock developed that makes thieves immediately vomit | The Guardian
9. At Least 24,000 Inmates Have Staged Coordinated Protests in the Past Month. Why Have You Not Heard of Their Actions? | The Nation
10. He Kept Us Out Of War? | Slate Star Codex
    Trump has been more hawkish than Clinton, not less.
11. Actress Jen Richards just nailed the problem with casting cisgender actors in trans roles
12. Transparent’s Trans Director Silas Howard Tells Us If Jeffrey Tambor Should Have Been Cast
    Well no, he doesn’t, but it’s still an interesting interview.
13. Mark Ruffalo Made A Movie About Trans People — Without Casting Or Consulting Any Trans People
    I’m kind of amazed this still happens.
14. Taibbi on Amy Goodman Arrest for Covering Dakota Pipeline Story – Rolling Stone
    The prosecutor arrested her for not being “balanced” in her coverage. I’m not even kidding.
15. This is the best book to help you understand the wild 2016 campaign – Vox
    “Partisan loyalties are largely built up from fundamental group identities rather than based on profound ideological commitments, and swing voters swing in large part for no good reason at all — maybe because of a recession, but maybe because of a swing in global oil prices or because the Steelers lost or almost anything else.”
16. If assisted suicide is legal, people will be pressured to commit suicide. It should be legal anyway.
17. The Price I’ve Paid For Opposing Donald Trump | National Review
    Not just him but also his family.
18. Participation Awards Don’t Suck. You Suck. | Houston Press
19. On banter, bonding and Donald Trump | language: a feminist guide
20. The Myth Of The Absent Black Father
    A report on a CDC study from 2014 that I somehow missed (or had forgotten). But see also this rebuttal from Real Clear Policy.
21. What A Black Woman Wishes Her Adoptive White Parents Knew – BuzzFeed News
22. The state map if only White people voted, and if only Non-White people voted.
    Trump would not win a single state if whites couldn’t vote. If only whites could vote, Clinton would still win a few states – the ones you’d expect – but she’d certainly lose the race.
23. Taking Trump voters’ concerns seriously means listening to what they’re actually saying – Vox
    Trump voters are not typically poor, but that’s the narrative many reporters are invested in.
24. Women: Have you ever wondered how much energy you put in to avoid being assaulted? It may shock you
25. The way to a better work-life balance? Unions, not self-help | Guardian Careers | The Guardian
26. How Did Walmart Get Cleaner Stores and Higher Sales? It Paid Its People More – The New York Times
27. Watch Asian Americans recount racist microaggressions they experience every day – Vox
28. Law Professor’s Response to Black Lives Matter Shirt Complaint — Social Design Notes
29. The white flight of Derek Black – The Washington Post
    How inviting a Stormfront leader to Shabbos led to him renouncing white nationalism.
30. Why I left Republican Party to register as a Democrat – Business Insider
31. ‘Game of Thrones’ Is Even Whiter Than You Think | VICE | United States
32. The Moral Of The Story | Slate Star Codex
    Do not read if you’re allergic to puns.
33. FBI Facial Recognition Expert Helps Denver PD Arrest Wrong Man Twice For The Same Crime
    The cops beat him up pretty badly, as well. If he hadn’t happened to be on his employer’s security footage at the time he was supposedly robbing a bank, things cold have gone even worse for him.
34. How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind | Cracked.com
    One of a growing genre of “what are Trump voters thinking?” articles. I have issues with this article, and with this trend of articles, but I still think it’s worth reading.
35. AskTrumpSupporters
    Along similar lines, the “Ask Trump Voters” reddit is interesting reading.
36. Did Black Americans Own Slaves Before The Civil War?
    Yes, they did, some for profit and exploitation, some for good reasons (such as buying a relative to rescue them), some… in between.
37. Uber’s Ad-Toting Drones Are Heckling Drivers Stuck in Traffic
38. ▶︎ Curious | Claire Keepers
    This is an album that you can listen to online. I really enjoyed it.
39. London Is Still Paying Rent to the Queen on a Property Leased in 1211 | Atlas Obscura
    And no one living knows exactly where the property is located.
40. The Midwest’s Racial Incarceration Problem
    The South puts more black men in prison in absolute numbers – but as a percentage of prisoners, the North and Midwest are worse.
41. My body doesn’t need a cure: Sizeism, classism and the big-business hustle of the clean-eating industry – Salon.com
42. Clinton’s Aggressive Foreign Policy | The American Conservative

Donald Trump Is Tearing the NFL Apart

A woman had a baby. Then her hospital charged her $39.35 to hold it. – Vox
Another consumer was literally unable to find out, in advance, what a standard birth at a hospital costs.

Police Arrest Black Arkansas Legislator For Filming A Traffic Stop
The law making it legal to film police, was actually authored by the legislator they arrested. The police have dropped the charges and apologized.

Top Evangelical College Group to Dismiss Employees Who Support Gay Marriage | TIME

7 Reasons to Stop Freaking Out About Obamacare
Interestingly, the refusal of many Red states to expand Medicaid for the poor has caused insurance premiums to rise.

Anderson Cooper is surprised to find himself on the RidicuList for smelly candles – YouTube
No deep issue here, I just thought it was funny.

The Dutch Reach: Clever Workaround to Keep Cyclists from Getting “Doored” – 99% Invisible

Is Canadian Obesity Network Really OK Killing 15 of Every 1,000 Fat People? – Paperblog
On their Facebook page, they suggested that if 15 out of 1000 people who have bariatric surgery die, that’s “actually very few.”

It’s time for science to abandon the term ‘statistically significant’ | Aeon Essays
Interesting short read on the reproducibility crisis.

The cost of affordable housing: Does it pencil out?
Interesting interactive tool from the Urban Institute showing the costs of building affordable housing, versus what renting to poor family makes. The bottom line is, there’s no way to make money building affordable housing without significant government subsidies.

What Can Be Done About Skyrocketing Drug Prices? | True Cost – Analyzing our economy, government policy, and society through the lens of cost-benefit
There’s also the idea, favored by Bernie Sanders, using a prize fund.

Louisiana’s “literacy” test, circa 1964.
“Do what you are told to do in each statement, nothing more, nothing less. Be careful as one wrong answer denotes failure of the test. You have ten minutes to complete the test.” I’m highly literate, and I frankly doubt I would have passed it. None of the questions are that hard, taken alone – although some seem designed to trick people into giving a wrong answer – but under pressure, it would be easy to mess up on just one. Of course, I wouldn’t have been asked to take the test.

Priorities: Justice vs. Safety in Convention Culture | Blue Author Is About To Write
“People who are saying that a convention should never act on a complaint without performing a serious investigation, weighing evidence, and having a finding of facts culminating in a verdict in a sentence are, whether they know it or not, advocating for one of two possibilities: an endless succession of unqualified kangaroo courts or a world where conventions never act on complaints.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg calls Colin Kaepernick national anthem protest dumb and disrespectful — Quartz
And an update: Ruth Bader Ginsburg apologizes to Colin Kaepernick after criticizing anthem protest. Thanks, Duncan!

That’s Not Who We Are – by Mike Dawson
Long-form political cartoon looking at the long roots of racism in America.

The shocking pain of American men – The Washington Post
Despite the title, the pain epidemic is about Americans in general, not just men. But it apparently explains a lot of declining male workforce participation, while the similar decline of female chronic pain sufferers working has been hidden by the general increase in female participation.

The Collective Gaslighting of the Trigger Warning Debate

The evangelical women speaking out against Trump have more influence than you think.

Why French pigs say groin, Japanese bees say boon and American frogs say ribbit – The Washington Post
Includes a fun interactive insert, which you folks who have used up this month’s allotment of WaPo articles can also view here, letting you hear how people in different languages say animal noises.

By the way, if you have Amazon Prime anyway, you get six months of the WaPo free. (I don’t get any kickbacks for saying that, alas.)

Important internet debate: Is a hot dog a sandwich? And if that wasn’t enough, there are further arguments here.

A Multi-Layered Anatomical Mural by ‘Achilles’ | Colossal
I lack the words to describe how cool I find this.

Top image: Treacherous Stair Steps by ‘Skurk’ | Colossal

1. Getting real about bad advice | language: a feminist guide
   Why advice to women to change how they speak is misguided. Via Grace, who says “It takes awhile to get there (while making other good points, mind you), but at the end, it makes a really good point about why recognizing and understanding structural inequalities is important.”
2. Police Body-Worn Cameras Are Making Departments More Powerful – The Atlantic
3. Scientists reveal most accurate depiction of a dinosaur ever created | Elsa Panciroli | Science | The Guardian
4. Why Dieting Can Rarely (If Ever) Be Body Positive | Bustle
5. Is fat-shaming Donald Trump a fair response to his misogyny?
   Their answer (and mine): No.
6. “This is Us” Fails To Unpack The Tragic Fat Girl Trope At All And It’s Super Bumming Me Out – Medium
7. In defense of the “imagine she was your sister” argument, and a partial rebuttal.

Also, here’s my contribution to a different thread of the discussion.

8. When a Worker Freezes to Death in a Walk-In Freezer at the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel in Downtown Atlanta
9. Trump used $258,000 from his charity to settle legal problems – The Washington Post
   He also bought himself hugely expensive things from his charity, bought advertising for his hotel with his charity, etc. He has not, by the way, donated any of his own money to his charity for years; the money comes from other people’s donations. He’s like a cartoon tycoon villain.
10. Ingenious Hack for Sketching with Two Point Perspective Using an Elastic String | Colossal
11. ‘Birth of a Nation’ actress Gabrielle Union: I cannot take Nate Parker rape allegations lightly – LA Times
12. Middle School Students Push for a Gender-Neutral Dress Code—And Win | Bitch Media
13. I love this little two-page comic about time travel by Bouletcorp.
14. High Hitler: how Nazi drug abuse steered the course of history | Books | The Guardian
15. Asking the Wrong Questions: Tales of the City: Thoughts on Luke Cage
    Nussbaum, like me, has a very mixed reaction to Luke Cage. The show does everything so well – except for the story. But the things it does right (mainly, the complete centering of a black and brown community at every level) are so rare to see in the superhero genre that it overwhelms the things it does wrong.
16. Jeffrey Tambor, Coming Out, and “The Most Important Time To Be An Artist” – Medium
    Interesting story from a writer who took an acting workshop for trans actors taught by Tambor.
17. Wealthy black kids more likely to go to prison than poor white kids | NOLA.com
18. Why Trump Answered the Wrong Question on Race
    Really interesting take, especially on how Black communities are simultaneously over and under policed. Thanks to Mandolin for the link.
19. “I don’t know how to describe this .gif of a mcdonald’s fight on rideau street except to say that at one point, someone pulls out a raccoon.”
20. It’s Easy for Obamacare Critics to Overlook the Merits of Medicaid Expansion – The New York Times
    Indirect link.
21. Female Chief Terminates 850 Child Marriages in Malawi and Sends Girls Back to School | Viral Women
22. ‘Sesame Street’ Afghan Spin-Off’s Puppet Deals With Feminism and Racism — And Trolls
23. A universal basic income could wind up hurting the poor and helping the rich — Quartz
24. Greg Rucka on Queer Narrative and WONDER WOMAN | Comicosity
    Rucka is the current writer of the WW comic.
25. Attorney general to ignore new report finding that commonly-used forensics are bogus.
    I’m really not confident in DA’s ability to discern when evidence isn’t scientifically justified.
26. Employees at Trump’s California golf course say he wanted to fire women who weren’t pretty enough – Los Angeles Times