december 2021

unrest (2017), the river runner, miss sloane (2016), the alpinist (2020), 14 peaks (2021), don't look up

The Atlantic - How Parking Destroys Cities
NYT - How Beijing Influences the Influencers
Pew Research - The State of Gig Work in 2021
Neiman Lab - It’s not their job to buy you cake
LA Times - How will California’s new laws affect you?
Outside - Cotopaxi opens up about recent Facebook scam
BBC - New Zealand to ban cigarettes for future generations
Chron - Volunteers need help replacing stolen ghost bikes in Houston
The Nation - New York City’s Radical Proposal for Noncitizen Voting
The Conversation - How Christmas Became an American Holiday Tradition
Gastro Obscura - Why Are So Dang Many Potato Chip Brands From Pennsylvania?
Rest of World - How Shein beat Amazon at its own game — and reinvented fast fashion
NPR - This Is How The White Population Is Actually Changing Based On New Census Data
SF Gate - San Francisco-based DoorDash is requiring engineers to deliver food — and they’re furious
CBS - Millions of workers retired during the pandemic. The economy needs them to "unretire," experts say.
Kaiser Health News - West Virginia Sen. Manchin Takes the Teeth Out of Democrats’ Plan for Seniors’ Dental Care
Huffington Post - I'm Black But Look White. Here Are The Horrible Things White People Feel Safe Telling Me.

ProPublica - States Are Hoarding $5.2 Billion in Welfare Funds Even as the Need for Aid Grows
"According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 16.1% of children under age 18 lived in poverty in 2020, up from 14.4% the year before."
"Tennessee has $790 million in federal welfare funding sitting around — the largest pool of unspent welfare dollars nationwide — though it has recently promised to spend it. Hawaii has $364 million idling in an account, equivalent to $2,923 per person living in poverty. And Oklahoma has $264 million, nearly double its annual TANF budget of $138 million."

November 2022

the french dispatch, okja (2017), good hair (2009), picture a scientist (2020), disclosure (2020)

Vox - The “ghost stores” of Instagram
MediBank - The history of orange juice
Quartz - There is no shortage of US truck drivers
The Atlantic - Why I’ll Keep Saying ‘Pregnant Women
NYT - What Paternity Leave Does for a Father’s Brain
Axios - Scoop: FEC lets foreigners finance U.S. ballot fights
The Atlantic - The Enormous Hole That Whaling Left Behind
The Ringer - The Deep and Twisted Roots of the American Yam
NYT - Moderna and U.S. at Odds Over Vaccine Patent Rights
The Atlantic - Why Health-Care Workers Are Quitting in Droves
The Atlantic - The Inventors of America’s Most Dangerous Idea
The Atlantic - Are Wind Turbines a Danger to Wildlife? Ask the Dogs.
The Atlantic - America's Never-Ending Battle Against Flesh-Eating Worms
The Atlantic - The Deadly Myth That Human Error Causes Most Car Crashes
NewsNation - From tummy tucks to facelifts: Pet plastic surgery is happening in Ohio
NY Times - Italy’s unvaccinated can still work with a swab test. But it will cost them.
NBC - Georgetown study: ‘To succeed in America, it’s better to be born rich than smart’
The Guardian - Revealed: the true extent of America’s food monopolies, and who pays the price
The State - They executed people for the state of South Carolina. For some, it nearly destroyed them.
LA Times - Dear UC Santa Barbara: Don’t let a petulant billionaire build a prison dorm on your campus
The Guardian - ‘It’s the biggest open secret out there’: the double lives of white-collar workers with two jobs
Washington Post - More Americans say they’re not planning to have a child, new poll says, as U.S. birthrate declines
Business Insider - Corporations are using inflation as an excuse to raise prices and make fatter profits — and it's making the problem worse

Bloomberg CityLab - Where Did All the Public Bathrooms Go?
"the U.S. has only eight toilets per 100,000 people overall — tied with Botswana. (Iceland leads their ranking, with 56 per 100,000 residents.)"

I watched Good Hair by Chris Rock. it's about black women's hair. I think it's soooo interesting how the grass is always greener. i have the absolute straightest hair. i got a perm and it literally went away after after two showers. (disclaimer, when it's wet it's still a bit wavy, but when dry, not at all). more tellingly, i didn't own a hairbrush for a decade plus because my hair is so straight, it doesn't tangle. i finally bought a hairbrush because it's in the shape of a hedgehog and because joe would chase me around the apartment with a comb. but anyway, I think the MOST beautiful hair is black women's natural hair! I love a big afro! and dreads, and tight curls. amazing and so beautiful.
the "best" part of the documentary is the way these men talk about women is hilarious. there's a scene in a barbershop where rock asks when the last time these men touched a black woman's hair was, if they're allowed to, even in sex, touch a black woman's hair. and if this isn't why some black men prefer white women, because there aren't any barriers. and one guy totally says yes. wow. 

October 2021

less stress at work this month, so have the energy to actually "do" something at night. plus, I think I may now be less discriminating in choosing "notable articles."

the midnight sky (2020), judas and the black messiah (2020), dune

Simon Garfield - mauve: how one man invented a color that changed the world

Slate - Where’s My Lyme Vaccine?
The Hustle - The economics of dollar stores
Vox - The surprising downsides to planting trillions of trees
The Atlantic - Different Cultures Define Happiness Differently
The Nation - “Feel-Good” News Story or Poverty Propaganda?
EuroNews - Babies are full of microplastics, new research shows
Vox - America’s monopoly problem stretches far beyond Big Tech
AP - Colorado woman who won’t get vaccinated denied transplant
Vox - The very cute, totally disturbing tale of the American “it” dog
NYT - Why Do American Grocery Stores Still Have an Ethnic Aisle?
Wired - Religious Exemptions for Vaccine Mandates Shouldn't Exist
NYT - How Other Nations Pay for Child Care. The U.S. Is an Outlier.
The Atlantic - Why Are Americans Still—Still!—Wearing Cloth Masks?
NYT - White Tiger and Cheetah Furs: A Mess of Trump Gift Exchanges
America Magazine - Pope Francis’ 9 commandments for a just economy
Gastro Obscura - Picturing China’s Bamboo Chopstick Industry From the Sky
NYT - Moderna, Racing for Profits, Keeps Covid Vaccine Out of Reach of Poor
NYT - From ‘The Sopranos’ to ‘Star Trek,’ Pop-Culture Cookbooks Fuel Fandoms
NPR - Hospitals Have Started Posting Their Prices Online. Here's What They Reveal
New York Magazine - Will ‘the Great Wealth Transfer’ Trigger a Millennial Civil War?
Vice - ‘People Work 100 Days Straight’: Kellogg’s Workers Shut Down Cereal Factories
Teen Vogue - Documented Dreamers Lack the Protections DACA Offers Young Immigrants
The Nation Relying on Public-Private Partnerships Has Weakened America’s Pandemic Response
Eye on Design - Don’t Worry, These Gangly-armed Cartoons Are Here to Protect You From Big Tech
Slate - I Signed Up to Write College Essays for Rich Kids. I Found Cheating Is More Complicated Than I Thought.
Smithsonian - The Rules About How to Address the U.S. Flag Came About Because No One Wanted to Look Like a Nazi
The Conversation - Psychological ‘specialness spirals’ can make ordinary items feel like treasures – and may explain how clutter accumulates
Citizens United - Report: For 20 Top-Selling Drugs, Big Pharma Made Far More From U.S. Sales Than From the Rest of the World Combined

LA Times - California outlawed the all-white-male boardroom. That move is reshaping corporate America
"The European rules tend to be mostly gender-focused, as opposed to American targets that also aim to boost racial and ethnic diversity."

The Nation - Why Isn’t Steve Bannon in Jail? Ask the Democrats.
"If the Trump era has taught us one thing, however, it’s that being absolutely wrong about the law in every way is okay if nobody has the will to hold you accountable."
"Which is why Trump cronies threaten the government. They know there will be no consequences for their actions. I don’t think Bannon is refusing to testify because he’s “afraid” of Donald Trump, I think he’s refusing to testify because he’s not afraid of elected Democrats."

Time - The Unmaking of the White Christian Worldview
"Recent surveys by PRRI, an organization I lead, reveal disturbing realities among white evangelical Protestants today: 61% believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. And the idea of patriotism has taken a troubling turn: 68% believe Trump is a “true patriot,” and one in three believe that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” More than seven in ten deny that the history of slavery and discrimination in the U.S. has any bearing on economic inequalities between white and Black Americans today. White evangelicals are the religious group most likely to refuse COVID-19 vaccines and object to mask mandates. One in four are QAnon conspiracy believers."
"White evangelical Protestants—the once self-proclaimed “moral majority”—have fallen from nearly a quarter of Americans just over a decade ago to 14.5% of the public today."
"James Baldwin wrote, with anger and pity, about the Black experience of seeing white people as “the slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing.” He understood whites, and white Christians in particular, to be trapped in a kind of self-induced psychosis, stemming from the strain of sustaining a conception of themselves as repentant sinners while living lives of indifference and violence toward their fellow Black and brown citizens."

september 2021

not much reading this month. been going out more often, and have been much more tired from work. 

reminiscence (2021), the emoji story (2020), this changes everything (2018), worth (2020)

Vox - The Death of the Job
NYT - Does Free College Work?
Taste - Strawberry and Kiwi: Why?
Buzzfeed - Why Am I Sp Bad At Typign?
The Atlantic - Colleges Have a Guy Problem
GQ - The Marathon Men Who Can't Go Home
GQ - The Best Things About the Worst Year Ever
Taste - Food Brands Fight the Background Check
Slate - “Men’s Rights Asians” Think This Is Their Moment
Vogue - What 6 Weeks Pregnant Looked and Felt Like to 6 Women
The Smithsonian - How Do Astronauts Spend Their Weekends in Space?
ABC News - North Korea holds 1st military parade since Biden took office
NPR - What I Learned From Watching Every Sport At The Tokyo Olympics
Inverse - How Marvel's Shang-Chi had to "Destroy" It's Own Racist Origins
Atlas Obscura - The Blacksmith Turning Decades of Chinese Bombs Into Kitchen Tools
Quartz - The racial dynamics between American women are flipped in a disorienting photo series
Refinery29 - A Japanese Man Was Hollywood’s First Sex Symbol So Stop Emasculating Our Asian Leading Men

Teen Vogue - Police Are Dying of COVID While Police Unions Fight Vaccines
"In 2020, COVID-19 was the highest cause of death for police officers on the job"

The Counter did a 3 part series on the prison / food industry complex. it's worth a read

The Counter - How corporations buy—and sell—food made with prison labor
"Across the country, at least 650 correctional institutions have some sort of food processing, landscaping, or farming operation..."
"States are allowed to garnish up to 80 percent for room and board, taxes, and other expenses. Again, Rice said, the concern about wages was not so much about the rights of incarcerated workers—rather, lawmakers wanted to ensure prison labor did not undercut the free market."
"For long hours in the hot sun, they earn as little as 4 cents per hour."

The Counter - This under-the-radar supply chain routes food from prisons to hospitals, food banks, and even schools
"PIECP rules allow corrections departments to withhold up to 80 percent of workers’ wages."
"The idea that the person who’s incarcerated should be paying for their own incarceration runs completely contrary to our knowledge of the prison system as a publicly funded and equally funded agency, right?"

The Counter - “Essential” and exploitable: Prison factories stayed open during the pandemic. People got sick.
"researchers have identified at least 650 U.S. correctional institutions that have some sort of food processing, landscaping, or farming operation. About half of states run some sort of farm or animal agriculture operation. People employed in state prisons earn anywhere from nothing to $5.15 per hour, averaging $0.14 to $1.14, according to a 2017 study by the Prison Policy Initiative. In federal institutions and many states, incarcerated people cannot refuse to work."
“I think one of the most obvious injustices in our prison system is that you have people who are working certain jobs, and then they come out of the prison system and they can’t get those same jobs on the outside.”

august 2021

the donut king (2020), luca, 

Taste - We Can’t Quit the Ziploc
The Atlantic - The Limits of Sex Positivity
The Atlantic - Vaccinated America Has Had Enough
The New Yorker - America Ruined My Name for Me
The Atlantic - The Vaccine Cards Are the Wrong Size
Vox - Why school lunches feel like they’re frozen in time
Quartz - The Five Universal Laws of Human Stupidity
The Conversation - When men started to obsess over six-packs
NYT - Pandemic Aid Programs Spur a Record Drop in Poverty
BBC - Why South Korean women are reclaiming their short hair
NYT - Inside the Diverse and Growing Asian Population in the U.S.
The New Yorker - Tokyo’s Olympics Have Become the Anger Games
Wired - How Some Americans Are Breaking Out of Political Echo Chambers
Bloomberg - Shipping Chaos Kills 1,800 Cows, Fueling Calls for Animal Ban
NYT - A Chinese ‘Auntie’ Went on a Solo Road Trip. Now, She’s a Feminist Icon.
Narratively - The Acrobatic Immigrant Who Invented Pilates in a Prisoner of War Camp
CNET - Take a look inside Air Horse One to see how racehorses fly to the Kentucky Derby
Bored Panda - People Are Shaming Their Dogs, And Here Are 43 Of The Worst Good Boys Ever
National Geographic - How science solved the mystery of feet washing ashore in the Pacific Northwest
Washington Post - Rand Paul discloses 16 months late that his wife bought stock in company behind covid treatment
The Hill - Stunning new report ranks US dead last in health care among richest countries—despite spending the most
Pro Publica - “Don’t You Work With Old People?”: Many Elder-Care Workers Still Refuse to Get COVID-19 Vaccine

Business Insider - COVID allowed Raquel Esquivel and 4,500 others to be released from overcrowded federal prisons. So why is she back behind bars?

Vogue - The Powerful Story Behind the German Gymnastics Team’s Unitards
Wall Street Journal - Bye-Bye Bikinis? Athletes at the Olympics and Beyond Fight Sexist Uniforms

july 2021

less reading this month since I stated a new job. "prepped" for a bit before that meeting up with old coworkers, and then sewed j a dozen plus scrub caps for like two weeks. 

raya, el bulli: cooking in progress (2010), chef flynn (2018), tokyo rising (2020), another round (2020), soul (2020)

NYT - How the World Ran Out of Everything
The Atlantic - Emergency Medicine’s Original Sin
Bloomberg - What Happened to Pickup Trucks?
Wired - Inside Silicon Valley’s Mayo Marketing Madness
Scientific American - The American Obsession with Lawns
NYT - Send in the Bugs. The Michelangelos Need Cleaning.
NYT - Why Police Have Been Quitting in Droves in the Last Year
AP - Oxfam: 11 people die of hunger each minute around the globe
Discover Magazine - How Adding Iodine to Salt Boosted Americans' IQ
The Atlantic - An Archivist Sneezes on a Priceless Document. Then What?
Mcclean's - Have Guelph's delightful ‘fairy doors’ become a forest plague?
SF Gate - California exodus is just a myth, massive UC research project finds
LA Times - Trees give us life. These fake ones give us TikTok on our cellphones
19th News - 5 pads for 2 cellmates: Period inequity remains a problem in prisons
Vogue - Why Is the Fashion World Still Obsessed With This Olympian’s Sunglasses?
NYT - Jury Awards $125 Million After Walmart Fires Woman With Down Syndrome
LA Times - To vaccinate or not? For U.S. Olympic athletes, the debate creates division
Salon - How evangelicals abandoned Christianity — and became "conservatives" instead
San Francisco Chronicle - Mendocino is running out of water. The solution might involve a very old train
The Guardian - Mystery of the wheelie suitcase: how gender stereotypes held back the history of invention
Business Insider - Meet the typical Costco shopper, a 39-year-old Asian American woman earning more than $125,000 a year
Insider - Photos show China's most surreal tourist spot— a fake Instagram-worthy town full of pretend farmers and phony fishermen
The Washington Post - A trans woman reportedly undressed in a spa. Customers said they were ‘traumatized,’ and a protest ensued.
Pro Publica - State Attorneys General Push Federal Government to Follow the Law and Finally Create Side-Impact Tests for Kids’ Car Seats

National Farm Worker Ministry - Children in the Fields
The Atlantic - The Overlooked Children Working America's Tobacco Fields

terribly written but worth the read if only for the shock and disgust factor:
Vice - I’m a Parkland Shooting Survivor. QAnon Convinced My Dad It Was All a Hoax.

june 2021

tinker tailor soldier spy (2011), stowaway (2021), amy tan: an unintended memoir, andre and his olive tree (2020), season 1 and 2 of Manifest, 

jonathan zimmerman - too hot to handle: a global history of sex education, jim davidson and kevin vaughan - the ledge: an inspirational story of friendship and survival

BBC - A day in the life of a flavour inventor
Wired - Wait, Vaccine Lotteries Actually Work?
NYT - Farewell, Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy
BBC - Why being kind to others is good for your health
The Atlantic - Where Gender-Neutral Pronouns Come From
AP - Some Stolen US Military Guns Used in Violent Crimes
FiveThirtyEight - Why People Fall For Conspiracy Theories
Xtra - With queer co-parenting, the more is definitely the merrier
The Atlantic - The Psychological Benefits of Commuting to Work
The Atlantic - You Can Only Maintain So Many Close Friendships
Refinery29 - Here’s Why So Many People Are Fighting On Airplanes
The Atlantic - The Unspoken Wedge Between Parents and Grandparents
Crosscut - UW research shows racism and redlining hurt local wildlife, too
FiveThirtyEight - Why The Two-Party System Is Effing Up U.S. Democracy
The Atlantic - Research Proves It: There’s No Such Thing as Noblesse Oblige
Vogue - Meet New York’s Top Hand and Foot Model Agent (It’s a Real Thing!)
FiveThirtyEight - It’s Not Just Young White Liberals Who Are Leaving Religion
Bloomberg - Employees Are Quitting Instead of Giving Up Working From Home
LA Times - L.A. traffic behavior is changing. Is post-pandemic gridlock inevitable?
Smithsonian Magazine - The Senator Who Stood Up to Joseph McCarthy When No One Else Would
Mother Jones - An Incarcerated Artist Memorializes the “Forgotten” People Killed By COVID in Prison
Variety - How the Rembrandts’ ‘Friends’ Song Became the Most Iconic TV Theme of the ’90s… and Beyond
San Francisco Chronical - San Jose plans to be first U.S. city requiring firearms owners to pay back taxpayers for gun violence

New Statesman - CEOs are hugely expensive – why not automate them?
NYT - Meager Rewards for Workers, Exceptionally Rich Pay for C.E.O.s
digg - The 20 Companies With The Biggest Pay Gaps Between CEOs And The Average Worker
NYT - Want to Make Money Like a C.E.O.? Work for 275 Years

Atlas Obscura - The Grim, Depression-Era Origins of Dance Marathons
"3780 continuous hours" is almost 158 days straight?! which is like 5 months?!

NHK - China addresses food waste with “clean plate” campaign
LOVE!!! I am every time absolutely SHOCKED by home much food waste there is in China. it's SO upsetting to see all that food going to waste at the end of banquets. UGH...

The Atlantic - How Helicopter Parenting Can Cause Binge Drinking
I never understood the "let's go get drunk!" people. like, yeah, let's go drink, get tispy, have fun. but getting drunk is no fun. getting vomit on your stuff, losing your phone and wallet, waking up the next day hugging the toilet, walking around with a hangover, ugh, no thanks. I don't understand wanting to do that at all. (full disclosure. I've been throw up drunk three times, and black out drunk twice. each time, I knowingly drank too much, but also did not know what my limit was. these days I have a two drink per hour maximum. but that usually turns into a two drink an event maximum, ha.)

NYT - The Cost of Being an ‘Interchangeable Asian’
"There is a Japanese proverb that states, “The quacking duck gets shot.” It stands in stark contrast to the Western idiom “The squeaky wheel gets the oil.”"
"In one study citing national employment data from 2018, the Ascend Foundation found that white men were 192 percent more likely to become executives than Asian men, and white women were 134 percent more likely to become executives than Asian women. Another study, from 2013, found that while there were nearly as many Asian professionals as white professionals working at five big tech companies (Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, LinkedIn and Yahoo), white men and women were 154 percent more likely to be an executive than their Asian counterparts; Asian professionals tended to peak at middle management."

The Atlantic - The Drug That Could Break American Health Care
"The way that Medicare pays for drugs exacerbates the problem. The program is not structured to negotiate with manufacturers, which spurs drug companies to set high prices. Worse still, Medicare also pays prescribing physicians 6 percent of a drug’s average sales price, a practice that encourages physicians to prescribe more expensive drugs."

may 2021

seaspiracy, the one (8 episode series), spotlight (2015), coded bias (2020), nail bomber: manhunt,

BBC - The rise, fall, and rise of the status pineapple
Hakai Magazine - The Unlikely Success of Fish Sticks
MSN - The man who didn't invent Flamin' Hot Cheetos
NPR - How Extremists Weaponize Irony To Spread Hate
Bloomberg - America Has Lost Its Taste for Iceberg Lettuce
Ars Technica - Why online voting is harder than online banking
NYT - As Covid-19 Devastates India, Deaths Go Undercounted
OZY - She's Taking on 'Wigging' and Whitewashing in Hollywood Stunts
Smithsonian Magazine - The Unmistakable Black Roots of ‘Sesame Street’
New Scientist - Birds use cigarette butts for chemical warfare against ticks
The Hustle - Why it’s nearly impossible to buy an original Bob Ross painting
Bloomberg - Charging 589% Interest in the Pandemic Is a Booming Business
Dangerous Minds - Gorillas Make Up 'Little Food Songs' While They Eat
The Conversation - How Where You’re Born Influences the Person You Become
Forbes - The Billionaire Who Wanted To Die Broke . . . Is Now Officially Broke
The Atlantic - The Body’s Most Embarrassing Organ Is an Evolutionary Marvel
Fast Company - Car design is about to change forever. This video encapsulates how
The Conversation - The forgotten origins of the modern gay rights movement in WWI
NY Post - Less than half of NYPD cops have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine
NPR - 6 Charts That Dismantle The Trope Of Asian Americans As A Model Minority
The Guardian - What Is the Mysterious ‘Global Hum’ – and Is It Simply Noise Pollution?
LA Times - Dwayne Johnson accounts for a third of all API movie leads as study finds sad stats
Upworthy - Women shared how they make sexist men explain their nasty jokes, and it's so satisfying
Smithsonian Magazine - The Man Who Brought the Swastika to Germany, and How the Nazis Stole It
Teen Vogue - Overdose Awareness Day: How Drug Overdoses and White Supremacy Are Linked in the U.S.

Medium - Why the Hybrid Workforce of the Future Depends on the ‘Geriatric Millennial’
Medium - Why I Call Myself a “Geriatric Millennial” — and Why Our Micro-Generation Matters

Axios - How CEOs got raises amid COVID
Institute for Policy Studies - Pandemic Pay Plunder

NYT - See Fewer People. Take Fewer Showers.
I hope this trend lasts! let's all save water and build up our immune system and microbiomes folks! personally, I shower 2-3 times a week if I'm not doing anything. my hair starts getting really greasy looking after 3 days. obviously, if I work out, go to the beach, do something dirty, I'll shower in between. body odor doesn't seem to be much of an issue either. I was never consistent with deodorant and gave it up completely like 10 years ago and have never had anyone complain. 

Brain Pickings - The Four Desires Driving All Human Behavior
"All human activity is prompted by desire. There is a wholly fallacious theory advanced by some earnest moralists to the effect that it is possible to resist desire in the interests of duty and moral principle. I say this is fallacious, not because no man ever acts from a sense of duty, but because duty has no hold on him unless he desires to be dutiful. If you wish to know what men will do, you must know not only, or principally, their material circumstances, but rather the whole system of their desires with their relative strengths."
"Man differs from other animals in one very important respect, and that is that he has some desires which are, so to speak, infinite, which can never be fully gratified, and which would keep him restless even in Paradise. The boa constrictor, when he has had an adequate meal, goes to sleep, and does not wake until he needs another meal. Human beings, for the most part, are not like this."

The Root - A Judge Asked Harvard to Find Out Why So Many Black People Were In Prison. They Could Only Find 1 Answer: Systemic Racism
"The researchers also couldn’t figure out why Black people are always initially charged with more serious crimes than white people. The easiest explanation was that Black suspects commit worse crimes than white people, but the data disproved that assumption. Then, they hypothesized that prosecutors may be overzealous when it came to convicting violent cases but that proved not to be the case. When all was said and done, Black people were arrested more often, had higher bail and received harsher sentences. But when they examined convictions, they discovered that Black people were surprisingly less likely to be convicted than white people. Essentially, according to the researchers, a white person has to commit an egregious offense to wind up behind bars while all a Black person has to do is...well, be a Black person."

Vice - Why Do So Many Adult Men Keep Their Mattresses On The Floor?
when I was dating, I wouldn't say that I judged, but I definitely noticed bed stuff. I never asked the one guy with the mattress on the floor why he didn't have a frame or even a box spring, but then, he seemed really poor, so I figured it was that. the thing I actually really noticed was lack of headboards. I think only one person had a headboard, and he was also the only one with actual PLANTS (two small trees!!!) in his room. he had a very adult room. but then, he also had the most money. j had a box spring, and a frame, and art!! but no headboard. he was the only one I asked. and he said he never liked them. personally, when I bought my first bed. it wasn't even a consideration NOT to have one. I bought a headboard that came attached to the frame. and chose a mattress that didn't need a box spring. we're on that same bed now, lol, a full. which is too small but has fit both of our too small bedrooms just fine. I'll be happy to upgrade to something bigger someday, tho honestly, with j's schedule, we barely sleep together now, except for my daily nap with him in the afternoons. 

april 2021

made you look (2020), i care a lot (2020), the last cruise, the biggest little farm (2018), all 3 seasons of shtisel

martin brookes - fly: the unsung hero of 20th century science

NYT - 2020 The Year in Pictures
BBC - Why some people can deal with the cold
The Hustle - The economics of vending machines
Smithsonian - Why Is the Pentagon a Pentagon?
Collaborative Fund - Expiring vs. Permanent Skills
Medium - The Slow, Troubling Death of the Autopsy
The Atlantic - The New Comedy of American Decline
BBC - The daring plan to save the Arctic ice with glass
NPR - There Is Growing Segregation In Millennial Wealth
BBC News - The millions being made from cardboard theft
NYT - Parents Got More Time Off. Then the Backlash Started.
Atlas Obscura - Around the World in Rare and Beautiful Apples
Atlas Obscura - The Battle to Invent the Automatic Rice Cooker
NYT - Why Don’t Some TV Shows Sound the Way They Used To?
FiveThirtyEight - How Hatred Came To Dominate American Politics
CNN Style - Karate, Wonton, Chow Fun: The end of 'chop suey' fonts
NYT - How Lower-Income Americans Get Cheated on Property Taxes
Wired - Facial Hair Is Biologically Useless. So Why Do Humans Have It?
AP News - US Catholic bishops may press Biden to stop taking Communion
The Conversation - The white supremacist origins of modern marriage advice
WaPo - Consumers loved ‘all-natural’ — until Trix cereal lost its neon-bright glow
WaPo - Want to borrow that e-book from the library? Sorry, Amazon won’t let you.
The Atlantic - Why British Kids Went Back to School, and American Kids Did Not
Bloomberg - The 50 Richest Americans Are Worth as Much as the Poorest 165 Million
American Progress - Ending the Tipped Minimum Wage Will Reduce Poverty and Inequality
The Guardian - In a pandemic, billionaires are richer than ever. Why aren't they giving more?

Axios -Exclusive: 1 in 2 states at risk of "rigged maps," group warns
Sludge - 35 States at Risk of ‘Rigged’ Districts Due to Gerrymandering, Report Finds

Eater - Why Do Fast-Casual Restaurants Get a Pass on Appropriation?
Eater - Shibumi’s White Chef Takes Aim at Japanese Restaurants for Not Being Japanese Enough

I've had a bunch of tabs open for many weeks, all articles about the recent increased attacks on asian americans, but I just haven't had the capacity to read them. well, I finally did, and these are the ones that resonated the most.
BBC - The docility myth flattening Asian women’s careers
ABC News - Survey: 1 in 4 in US Have Asian-American Bias
The Nation - Anti-Asian Violence in America Is Rooted in US Empire
The Washington Post - The real reasons the U.S. became less racist toward Asian Americans
NPR - 'Am I Asian Enough?' Adoptees Struggle To Make Sense Of Spike In Anti-Asian Violence
Refinery 29 - Talking About Anti-Asian Hate With My Conservative Chinese Mother Isn’t Always Easy, But It’s Never Been More Important
Time - My White Adoptive Parents Struggled to See Me as Korean. Would They Have Understood My Anger at the Rise in Anti-Asian Violence?

Bloomberg - Never Stop Cleaning Like It’s 2020
but why? isn't the actual purpose of cleaning so that we don't get sick? and if we weren't getting sick before, even if we didn't clean often "enough", then why keep it up? having a reasonable amount germs around keeps our immune systems healthier and more prepared for "bad" germs. 

march 2021

a river below (2017), fish meat (2012), raising shrimp (2013), miss representation (2011), anthropocene (2018), yiyi (2000), the last blockbuster (2020), audrey: more than an icon (2020), da 5 bloods (2020)

Vox - Performing to an empty Times Square
Narratively - The Man With the Golden Airline Ticket
Politico - A Harriet Tubman $20? That’s Just the Beginning
Reasons to Be Cheerful - We Can Eliminate Child Poverty
EcoCult - Is Leather Truly a Byproduct of the Meat Industry?
NYT - The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired.
NPR - Are We Raising Unhelpful, Bossy Kids? Here's The Fix
Scientific American - Trans Girls Belong on Girls’ Sports Teams
Harper's Bazaar - The Virus, the Vaccine, and the Dark Side of Wellness
MIT News - New study shows rich, poor have huge mortality gap in U.S.
Marketplace - Why rich people tend to think they deserve their money
LA Times - L.A. restaurants struggle with a new form of dine-and-dash
Teen Vogue - We Need to Talk About Digital Blackface in Reaction GIFs
BBC - Covid: From boom to bust - why lockdown hasn't led to more babies
Nat Geo - Remembering the night two atomic bombs fell—on North Carolina
Tax Policy Center - Who Gets the Tax Benefit For Those Checkout Donations?
NYT - The U.S. Is Sitting on Tens of Millions of Vaccine Doses the World Needs
Scientific American - Killings by Police Declined after Black Lives Matter Protests
Al Jazeera - 2020 marked 15th straight year of declining world freedom: Report
Life Hacker - Why You Should Never 'Unsubscribe' From Illicit Spam Emails and Texts
SF Gate - The bizarre tale of the world's last lost tourist, who thought Maine was San Francisco
Winston-Salem Journal - North Carolina sends 6-year-olds to court. Why some say it's time for change.
Upworthy - A scorching hot take on why younger people say 'no problem' instead of 'you're welcome.'
Huff Post - ‘I Miss My Mom’: Children Of QAnon Believers Are Desperately Trying To Deradicalize Their Own Parents
ProPublica - Donald Trump Built a National Debt So Big (Even Before the Pandemic) That It’ll Weigh Down the Economy for Years
The Globe and Mail - Is your butter not as soft as it used to be? The pandemic and our urge to bake is partly to blame – along with palm oil
News Medical - 50% of men struggle to identify a woman’s vagina correctly on a diagram: Survey

The Guardian - A $15 minimum wage isn't just about justice. It's good economics
CNBC - Walmart and McDonald’s are among top employers of Medicaid and food stamp beneficiaries, report says

Sky News - Human penises are shrinking because of pollution, warns scientist
"Dr Swan believes that the rapidly decreasing fertility rate means that most men will be unable to produce viable sperm by 2045."

U.S. leads among countries that spend the most on public health care
Public Citizen - Analysis: How For-Profit Health Care Worsened the Pandemic
"About one-third of COVID-19 deaths and 40% of infections were tied to a lack of insurance"

Vogue - What Happens When One Partner Is Vaccinated and the Other Isn’t?
wow, I barely related to this article at all. maybe it's cause j got vaccinated because of his hospital job where he was closely interacting with dozens of covid patients each night, but I was not envious in the slightest, just very relieved. I suppose I'm holding him back from some things, but his parents aren't fully vaccinated yet, and la restrictions are pretty tight anyway so I don't feel like we're missing out on much. and certainly not due to me. 

The Atlantic - There’s No Real Reason to Eat 3 Meals a Day
I have NEVER understood why some people (my mom) insist on eating 3 meals a day, even on weekends when we slept in until like 10am. breakfast at 10:30am, lunch at 12:30pm, dinner at 6:30pm? ludicrous. eat when you're hungry. obviously.

Nation World - 125 people got $500 per month free for 2 years. Here's what happened.
I'm very intrigued by UBI, tho I wonder if it would have the same results if 1. people thought the payments would go on forever and 2. everyone got it. if you think the payments will stop, might you be more careful with it now? also if you're one of the lucky few that get it, will you try hard to maximize your windfall? something tells me no. i can't help but think of that stat online that 70% of lottery winners eventually go broke (here's a related article)

NYT - Major Evangelical Adoption Agency Will Now Serve Gay Parents Nationwide
"...more than 20 percent of same-sex couples with children have an adopted child, compared to 3 percent of straight couples, according to a 2016 report... Gay couples are also significantly likelier to have a foster child."

The Hill - Warren's wealth tax would cost 100 richest Americans $78 billion
how do only 100 people have $78 billion to SPARE? like, this isn't their total wealth, this is just what they would pay in taxes!

FiveThirthEight - Why So Many Men Stuck With Trump In 2020
"...men who identified as completely masculine on the survey agreed that the Trump administration has a strategy on COVID-19 — setting them apart from all other men and women. (Compared with other respondents, completely masculine men were also much more evenly split on the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic, more likely to believe that wearing a mask was more about being politically correct than about preventing the spread of COVID-19, and more likely to oppose a national mask mandate.)"
"One analysis even found that men who were considered more sexist were more likely to report having contracted the virus."

february 2021

focused on reading books this month rather than watching tv at nights. finished 5 books, with 3 of those started this month :)

shaun of the dead (2004), the quest of alain ducasse (2017), what we do in the shadows (2014), baby God (2020), in the mood for love (2000), the fight (2020)

deborah blum - the poison squad: one chemist's single-minded crusade for food safety at the turn of the twentieth century
caitlin doughty - Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
sam Harris - the end of faith: religion, terror, and the future of reason
piper kerman - orange is the new black: my year in a womans prison
danny meyer - setting the table: the transforming power of hospitality in business

Food and Wine - The Customer Is Not Always Right
Axios - The future of "smart" cities is in street lights
NYT - McDonald’s Workers in Denmark Pity Us
The Nation - Bill Gates Gives to the Rich (Including Himself)
Nautilus - Reading, That Strange and Uniquely Human Thing
Inverse - Scientists unearth a consequence of solar panels in the Sahara
Restaurant Dive - McDonald's CEO: Chain will do 'just fine' with higher wages
ProPublica - They Know How to Prevent Megafires. Why Won’t Anybody Listen?
KHN - They Pledged to Donate Rights to Their COVID Vaccine, Then Sold Them to Pharma
Vox - Why businesses can still get away with paying pennies to employees with disabilities
PBS - COVID-19 has already cut U.S. life expectancy by a year. For Black Americans, it’s worse
The 19th - Most nursing homes say they won’t be able to stay open another year due to pandemic costs
USA Today - GoFundMe CEO: Hello Congress, Americans need help and we can't do your job for you
The American Prospect - Reps Would Have to Resign From Corporate Boards Under Democrats’ Ethics Bill
Denverite - In the first six months of health care professionals replacing police officers, no one they encountered was arrested
ProPublica - People Over 75 Are First in Line to Be Vaccinated Against COVID-19. The Average Black Person Here Doesn’t Live That Long.

Gizmodo - Is Amazon Evil and Am I Evil for Using It?
Matt Ruby - Just how evil is Amazon? And am I awful for being a Prime addict?

NPR - Spurred By The Capitol Riot, Thousands Of Republicans Drop Out Of GOP
The Hill - Tens of thousands of voters drop Republican affiliation after Capitol riot

The Guardian - US police three times as likely to use force against leftwing protesters, data finds
"Law enforcement officers were also more likely to use force against leftwing demonstrators, whether the protests remained peaceful or not."

organizing

What's the correct way to organize your bookshelf?

if you have a fair number of books, and if you ever plan to find one again easily, by genre is the only way to organize!!! within genres, I also group by author, series, subject, chronologically, and, sometimes, book size. which is why I try to stick with the medium format of soft covers. looks better.

january 2021

spent a lot of time on the job boards this month so usually had something on in the background.

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart, Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie (2018), Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (2017), my Scientology movie (2017), scotch: a golden dream (2018), vice (2018), the search for general tsao (2015), kasama: infinity (2018), bombshell (2019)

BBC - 'Butterfly child' given life-saving skin
Politico - ‘Coward’: MAGA internet turns on Trump
GQ - Is Your Beloved Outdoors Gear Bad for the Planet?
BBC - The 432-year-old manual on social distancing
Medium - Why Everyone’s Suddenly Hoarding Mason Jars
AP News - Identical twins aren’t perfect clones, research shows
AP News - Vaccine rollout hits snag as health workers balk at shots
Buzzfeed - The Pro-Trump Mob Was Doing It For The ’Gram
NYT - Pence Reached His Limit With Trump. It Wasn’t Pretty.
Vice - The Emerging Fetish of Laying Alien Eggs Inside Yourself
Vogue - A Fashionable History of First Ladies on Inauguration Day
AP News - EXPLAINER: Why do the media call races in US elections?
NYT - Another Arrest, and Jail Time, Due to a Bad Facial Recognition Match
Defense One - Pentagon Won’t Throw Traditional Farewell Ceremony for Trump
Atlas Obscura - Meet the Photographer Hunting for the Scars of Soviet Rule
Complex - How Crocs Capitalized on Streetwear and Came Back From the Dead
Vox - The big decision before Elon Musk, now the richest person in the world
Bloomberg - The Rich Are Minting Money in the Pandemic Like Never Before
The Economist - The Japanese authorities understood covid-19 better than most
Foreign Policy - ‘We’re in a Worse Place Today Than We Were Before He Came In’
Smithsonian - How the Pledge of Allegiance Went From PR Gimmick to Patriotic Vow
NYT - Beyond Impeachment, a Push for Ethics Laws That Do Not Depend on Shame
The Guardian - Facts won't fix this: experts on how to fight America's disinformation crisis
Business Insider - Trump administration staffers are getting snubbed while hunting for jobs.
Buzzfeed - Facebook Has Been Showing Military Gear Ads Next To Insurrection Posts
FiveThirtyEight - The Police’s Tepid Response To The Capitol Breach Wasn’t An Aberration
The Undefeated - Attack on the Capitol shows America’s racial double standard is alive and well
Washington Post - The $3,000-a-month toilet for the Ivanka Trump/Jared Kushner Secret Service detail
Washington Post - Lawmakers with stock holdings vote in ways that juice their portfolios, data shows
Politico - ‘He has an obligation to them’: Attorney for ‘QAnon shaman’ asks Trump to pardon rioters
Salon - Government study shows taxpayers are subsidizing “starvation wages” at McDonald's, Walmart
The 19th - About 700,000 parents with young kids left the workforce in 2020. For many, loss of child care was to blame.
Refinery29 - Like Other Republicans, Meghan McCain Only Cares About Fixing A Problem Once She’s Experienced It
ProPublica - He Made a Minor Mistake Filling Out an Unemployment Form. Then the State Demanded $14,990 From Him.
Toronto Star - How a ‘Schitt’s Creek’ character stirred debate about actors faking accents and Hollywood’s diversity
SB Nation - Philadelphia is greasing up lamp posts with Crisco to stop Eagles fans from climbing them after the NFC Championship
Business Insider - Bumble removed its political filter after people said they used it to lure conservatives who were at the Capitol riot into sending incriminating evidence
Business Insider - Some among America's military allies believe Trump deliberately attempted a coup and may have had help from federal law-enforcement
Business Insider -  Leaked documents show White House blocked a critical government website to recruit election workers during the COVID pandemic and while Trump railed against voter fraud.

Reuters - Why Indonesia is vaccinating its working population first, not elderly
I absolutely agree with this strategy. 

CNN - The US economy lost 140,000 jobs in December. All of them were held by women
"According to new data released Friday, employers cut 140,000 jobs in December, signaling that the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic is backtracking. Digging deeper into the data also reveals a shocking gender gap: Women accounted for all the job losses, losing 156,000 jobs, while men gained 16,000."
"It also highlighted another painful reality: Blacks and Latinas lost jobs in December, while White women made significant gains."

Yahoo - Column: U.S. billionaires are done with Social Security taxes for 2021, but you'll pay all year
"...by eliminating the payroll tax cap entirely, would make Social Security indisputably solvent for at least 40 years..."