February 2020

Alita: battle angel [2019]

too much politics this month, oh, and travelling, to read much. :(

Bloomberg - China Sacrifices a Province to Save the World From Coronavirus
Vox - Having fewer kids will not save the climate
NYT - How Exercise Might Affect Our Food Choices, and Our Weight
City Lab - The Glamorous, Sexist History of the Women’s Restroom Lounge
NPR - Enjoy the Extra Day Off! More Bosses Give 4-Day Workweek a Try
BBC - How fast food reveals secrets of the economy
Fast Company - This map shows which companies have lasted hundreds (and even thousands) of years
Nautilus - The Sound So Loud That It Circled the Earth Four Times
Quartz - The forgotten art of squatting is a revelation for bodies ruined by sitting
Atlas Obscura - The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the 'Rats of NIMH
CBC - 'It's pretty staggering': Returned online purchases often sent to landfill, journalist's research reveals

The New Yorker - How South Korea Is Composting Its Way to Sustainability
"In the course of weeks or months, billions of microorganisms feed on the carbon and nitrogen in the composting mixture. Dry and brown organic matter provides carbon; green matter provides nitrogen. As the microorganisms process the mixture, they need oxygen, which is usually generated by stirring. Not enough oxygen, and the compost will smell like rotten eggs; too much nitrogen, and the compost will smell like ammonia; a good ratio of elements, and the compost will simply smell like fresh earth."

January 2020

American factory [2019], saving capitalism [2017], downton abbey [all seasons, we started months ago!]

Outside - What Happens to Your Body When You Climb Everest
CNN - A Lonely Plea: 'Anybody Need a Grandma for Christmas 
Vox - The 2010s were supposed to bring the ebook revolution. It never quite came.
Slate - I Killed My Teenager's Fancy College Dreams. You Should, Too.
Harvard Business Review - Why It's So Hard to Change People's Commuting Behavior
Refinery 29 - Can The Low-Carbon Diet Cure Our Climate Crisis?
NYT - The Gene Drive Dilemma: We Can Alter Entire Species, but Should We?
LA Times - Your $14 salad’s not as eco-friendly as advertised — but Sweetgreen’s trying
BBC - The medications that change who we are
Nylon - What Really Happens When You Donate Your Clothes—And Why It's Bad
Bored Panda - 30 Americans Share Their Student Loan Debts And You Can Feel How Hopeless These People Are
The Conversation - How steak became manly and salads became feminine
BBC Future - The dystopian lake filled by the world's tech lust

The Guardian - 'Like sending bees to war': the deadly truth behind your almond-milk obsession
"A recent survey of commercial beekeepers showed that 50 billion bees – more than seven times the world’s human population – were wiped out in a few months during winter 2018-19. This is more than one-third of commercial US bee colonies, the highest number since the annual survey started in the mid-2000s."
"On top of the threat of pesticides, almond pollination is uniquely demanding for bees because colonies are aroused from winter dormancy about one to two months earlier than is natural. The sheer quantity of hives required far exceeds that of other crops – apples, America’s second-largest pollination crop, use only one-tenth the number of bees. And the bees are concentrated in one geographic region at the same time, exponentially increasing the risk of spreading sickness."

December 2019

Britney runs a marathon, sand wars [2013], morning glory [2010], empire of scents [2014]


Vogue - Your Next Puffer Coat Will Be Filled With Flower Petals, Not Feathers
Market Watch - Cautionary tale this holiday season: Fast shipping may contribute to climate change
Aeon - Religion is about emotion regulation, and it's very good at it
BBC - Crows Could Be the Smartest Animal Other Than Primates
Taste - The Multimillion-Dollar Junkets That Introduced Americans to Olive Oil
fivefightyeight - What Unites Republicans May Be Changing. Same With Democrats.
Bloomberg - Why Cruise Lines Keep Cutting Their Ships in Half
BBC - Why printers add secret tracking dots
Variety - How The Weather Channel Is Pioneering Mixed Reality for Live Television
Scientific American - How to Think about "Implicit Bias"
Bloomberg - The Economics of Dining as a Couple
BBC - A rubbish story: China's mega-dump full 25 years ahead of schedule
Taste - The Tyranny and the Comfort of Government Cheese
Vogue - The $120,000 Art Basel Banana, Explained

The Atlantic - We Are All Accumulating Mountains of Things
"A recent NPR/Marist poll found that nine in 10 consumers rarely or never return stuff they’ve bought online."
"In 2017, Americans spent $240 billion—twice as much as they’d spent in 2002—on goods like jewelry, watches, books, luggage, and telephones and related communication equipment, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which adjusted those numbers for inflation. Over that time, the population grew just 13 percent. Spending on personal care products also doubled over that time period. Americans spent, on average, $971.87 on clothes last year, buying nearly 66 garments, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association. That’s 20 percent more money than they spent in 2000. The average American bought 7.4 pairs of shoes last year, up from 6.6 pairs in 2000."
"But the ability to easily get rid of stuff may be making people feel a little better about buying things they don’t need, and motivating them to buy even more."

Mark Manson - The American Dream is Killing Us
"In fact, economic mobility is lower in the US than almost every other developed country, and somewhere on par with Slovenia and Chile — not exactly the gold standards of economic opportunity in the world"
"But over 25% of Americans have no savings. Zero."
"Here’s a stat that will knock your socks off: 45% of homeless people have a job."

november 2019

inside Bill's brain, one child nation, plastic China [2016], the crown season 3, inside the garbage of the world [2016]

read a lot this month since i was kind of snowed in in Tahoe with my parents for thanksgiving weekend.

Quartz - Until I was a man, I had no idea how good men had it at work
The Guardian - Should we stop keeping pets? Why more and more ethicists say yes
The Washington Post - This state requires company boards to include women. A new lawsuit says that’s unconstitutional.
The Guardian - How our home delivery habit reshaped the world
Buzzfeed - Her Amazon Purchases Are Real. The Reviews Are Fake.
Washington Post - When a deep red town’s only grocery closed, city hall opened its own store. Just don’t call it ‘socialism.’
Medium - Big Calculator: How Texas Instruments Monopolized Math Class
Popular Science - What would happen if Earth started to spin faster?
Bloomberg - Nine Secrets I Never Knew About Airports Until I Worked at LAX
The Atlantic - The Great American Eye-Exam Scam
Washington Post - Five Myths about America's Homeless
The Guardian - How Peru's potato museum could stave off world food crisis
Aeon - Think everyone died young in ancient societies? Think again

Mental Floss - 8 Psychological Tricks of Restaurant Menus
"The best menus account for the psychological theory known as the “paradox of choice,” which says that the more options we have, the more anxiety we feel. The golden number? Seven options per food category, tops (seven appetizers, seven entrees, etc.). “When we include over seven items, a guest will be overwhelmed and confused, and when they get confused they’ll typically default to an item they’ve had before..."

Grist - Why Detroit residents pushed back against tree-planting
"However, environmental justice is not just about the distribution of bad stuff, like pollution, or good stuff, like forestry projects across disadvantaged communities. It’s also about the distribution of power among communities that have historically only been the subjects and experiments of power structures."

The Lily - Have you been told not to keep score in your relationship? Here’s why that advice is sexist.
"Despite men taking on more household labor than ever before, there continues to be a litany of excuses for women doing more. Women aren’t always more nurturing or “better” at emotional invisible labor, and telling a woman, “You just have to ask me” still leaves the unseen burden on women to both identify what needs to be done and communicate the need to their partner, when men are perfectly capable of identifying and doing these tasks without being asked."

OneZero - Unraveling the Secret Supply Chain Behind an AmazonBasics Battery
"Amazon operates 75 fulfillment centers and 25 sortation centers across North America — a footprint so large that there’s an Amazon warehouse within 20 miles of half the U.S. population, according to Curbed."
"Amazon has only just begun to track its carbon footprint, a whopping 44.4 million metric tons in 2018, nearly equivalent to the output of Switzerland or Denmark."

october 2019

flew to and from China so a lot of movies this month. thankfully, pocket also works in china! (mostly anyway, couldn't read articles from the NYT but everything else seemed to work)

yesterday, MIB: international, she's the man [2006], stockholm [2018], pride and prejudice [2005], avengers: age of ultron [2015], spider man: homecoming [2017], spider man: far from home [2019] (watched all but the last 30min)

Mental Floss - What Ever Happened To Waterbeds?
ProPublica - Gutting the IRS
Mental Floss - Do Certain Sounds Enrage You? Neurologists May Know Why
Fast Company - Why I hate living in my tiny house
Mental Floss - Dyslexia Doesn't Work the Way We Thought It Did
Narratively - Meet Ladybeard, the Crown Prince of Japan's Strangest Music Scene
Wired - Why Are Rich People So Mean?
NYT - The Rich Really Do Pay Lower Taxes Than You
SF Chronicle - Missing mail: As postcards celebrate 150 years, they're also disappearing
Taste - Do You Eat Dog?
Mukah Pages - Why People Always Tap Two Fingers On The Table While Eating Dim Sum
OC Register - Congestion kills, so why are politicians making it worse?
Child care Canada - The global legacy of Quebec's subsidized child daycare
NYT - As Homelessness Surges in California, So Does a Backlash
CNN - It's only $4.99. But Costco's rotisserie chicken comes at a huge price


The Atlantic - Why Do Americans Smile So Much?
"Last year, I wrote about why some countries seem to smile less than average—and mistrust those who do seem unusually peppy. A country’s level of instability, that study found, might be why people who seem happy for no reason in, say, Russia, are considered foolish...  It turns out that countries with lots of immigration have historically relied more on nonverbal communication. Thus, people there might smile more.

Quartz - The strongest predictor of men’s well-being isn’t family or health
"The strongest predictor of men’s happiness and well-being is their job satisfaction, by a large margin—and the strongest predictor of job satisfaction is whether men feel they are making an impact on their companies’ success. This measure, the study finds, is influenced by whether men feel they are using their own unique talents at work, whether they are surrounded by a diverse set of perspectives, how easily and often they can chat with co-workers, whether they feel their opinions are valued, and whether they’re inspired by the people they work with."

The Atlantic - Men Don't Take Their Wife's Last Name at Marriage
"In medieval England, men who married women from wealthier, more prestigious families would sometimes take their wife’s last name, says Stephanie Coontz, a professor of marriage and family history at Evergreen State College. From the 12th to the 15th century, Coontz told me, in many “highly hierarchical societies” in England and France, “class outweighed gender.” It was common during this period for upper-class English families to take the name of their estates. If a bride-to-be was associated with a particularly flashy castle, the man, Coontz says, would want to benefit from the association. “Men dreamed of marrying a princess,” she says. “It wasn’t just women dreaming of marrying a prince.”"

September 2019

making a conscious effort to read less twitter, and more news articles. I get maybe 15 articles emailed to me a day from Pocket and Flipboard, so intend to actually read more rather than saving to read later. now if only I could find an app where I could share the articles I find most interesting. I used to use google+ but that's no longer a thing so instead I list them here. it's pretty unwieldy tho, especially if I add quotations. =\

Late night, once upon a time in Hollywood, welcome to marwen [2018], sustainable [2016], nacho libre [2006]

Yello - How 2020 Democrats could rewrite the rules of political typography
Buzzfeed News - America’s Orthodox Jews Are Selling A Ton Of The Products You Buy On Amazon
Saveur - Meet Switzerland's Breakaway Cheesemakers
Fast Company - This company hired anyone who applied. Now it’s starting a movement
Nautilus - The Girl Who Smelled Pink
Gizmodo - When a Stranger Decides to Destroy Your Life
Mental Floss - The Book So Big It Needed Its Own Furniture
Fast Company - There's a $218 billion design problem sitting in your fridge right now
Mental Floss - Home Sweet Homer: The Strange Saga of the Real-Life Simpsons House in Nevada
Harper's Bazaar - Why Fur Should Never Be Banned
US News - Extinct Bird Re-Evolved Itself Back Into Existence
Mental Floss - 19 Things You Might Not Know Were Invented by Women
Wall Street Journal - Dating Apps Are Making Marriages Stronger
Atlas Obscura - How Fish and Chips Migrated to Great Britain
The Atlantic - Amazon Ruined Online Shopping

AP News - Many US women say 1st sexual experience was forced in teens
"“Our culture teaches people not to be raped instead of teaching people not to rape,” he said."

"Almost 7 percent of women surveyed said their first sexual intercourse experience was involuntary; it happened at age 15 on average and the man was often several years older."

"Almost half of those women who said intercourse was involuntary said they were held down and slightly more than half of them said they were verbally pressured to have sex against their will."


The Guardian - California bans private prisons – including Ice detention centers
"As recently as 2016, private prisons locked up approximately 7,000 Californians, about 5% of the state’s total prison population, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics."

Atlas Obscura - The Forgotten History of New York's Bagel Famines
"In the 1950s, the Times often assumed that readers were unfamiliar with bagels; the paper offered pronunciation guides (“baygle”) and described it as “a form of Jewish baked goods sometimes described as a doughnut with rigor mortis.”

Mental Floss - 25 Things You Might Not Know About the Birds in Your Backyard
8. BASSIAN THRUSHES USE FARTS TO HUNT PREY.
Birds may not find toots as funny as humans do, but they still make use of them. The Australian Bassian thrush farts toward the ground, with the noxious smell helping to unearth worms and other insect prey.
25. THEY’LL NEVER BE MOVIE STARS.
American migratory bird species are hardly ever depicted in movies thanks to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act that prevents domestic birds from being bought or sold for commercial purposes. If you spot a backyard bird in film or on a show, it’s either an imported species or a computer effect. To see a jaybird, you’ll have to turn off the TV and look out a window.


The Guardian - Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
"The quest to master English in Korea is often called the yeongeo yeolpung or “English frenzy”. Although mostly confined to a mania for instruction and immersion, occasionally this “frenzy” spills over into medical intervention. As Sung-Yul Park relates: “An increasing number of parents in South Korea have their children undergo a form of surgery that snips off a thin band of tissue under the tongue … Most parents pay for this surgery because they believe it will make their children speak English better; the surgery supposedly enables the child to pronounce the English retroflex consonant with ease, a sound that is considered to be particularly difficult for Koreans.” There is no evidence to suggest that this surgery in any way improves English pronunciation. The willingness to engage in this useless surgical procedure strikes me, though, as a potent metaphor for English’s peculiar status in the modern world. It is no longer simply a tool suited to a particular task or set of tasks, as it was in the days of the Royal Navy or the International Commission for Air Navigation. It is now seen as the access code to the global elite. If you want your children to get ahead, then they better have English in their toolkit."

"Since publishing Decolonising the Mind, Ngũgĩ has worked to put its dictates into practice. He renounced his baptismal name, James, and with it Christianity, and ceased to write fiction in English. Since the 1980s, he has written all his novels and plays in his native Gikuyu, only using English (and occasionally Kiswahili) for essays and polemics. This last decision is one that many people still question. As he said in a recent interview: “If I meet an English person, and he says, ‘I write in English,’ I don’t ask him, ‘Why are you writing in English?’ If I meet a French writer, I don’t ask him, ‘Why don’t you write in Vietnamese?’ But I am asked over and over again, ‘Why do you write in Gikuyu?’ For Africans, the view is there is something wrong about writing in an African language.”"

"Today it is estimated that the world loses a language every two weeks. Linguists have predicted that between 50 and 90% of the world’s 6,000 or so languages will go extinct in the coming century. For even a fraction of these to survive, we’re going to have to start thinking of smaller languages not as endangered species worth saving, but as equals worth learning."


Outside - This Is the Beginning of the End of the Beef Industry
"It takes 36,000 calories of feed to produce 1,000 calories of beef. In the process, it uses more than 430 gallons of water and 1,500 square feet of land, and it generates nearly ten kilograms of greenhouse-gas emissions. In comparison, an Impossible Burger uses 87 percent less water, 96 percent less land, and produces 89 percent fewer greenhouse-gas emissions. Beyond Meat’s footprint is similarly svelte."

"But the core of each formula is very different. Beyond uses pea protein, while Impossible uses soy. Beyond gets its bloody color from beet juice; Impossible uses heme—the same molecule that makes our blood red—to achieve its meaty color and flavor. This is its killer app. Beef gets its beefiness from heme. When you cook heme, it produces the distinctive savory, metallic flavor of meat. Since heme is normally found in blood, no veggie concoction has ever used it. Soy plants do make microscopic amounts of it, but not enough to ever use. Impossible Foods’ breakthrough was to genetically engineer yeast to produce soy heme in a tank, like beer. This GMO process is a deal breaker for some people, but it makes all the difference. The Impossible Burger is incredible, the Beyond Burger merely passable."


The Guardian - Dark crystals: the brutal reality behind a booming wellness craze
"While a few large mining companies operate in Madagascar, more than 80% of crystals are mined “artisanally” – meaning by small groups and families, without regulation, who are paid rock-bottom prices."

"Would crystal consumers really be willing to pay more to guarantee safer, child labour-free mines, or a fair wage for miners? Schoen compared it to the organic food movement: if enough people wanted assurance of their products’ provenance, the supply systems would develop."

"Meanwhile, the $4.2tn wellness industry rolls on, bolstered by profits from cheap crystals and a generation looking for alternative modes of healing. Bajoras was confident his stones had healing power. After all, he said, if uranium could kill you, why shouldn’t lithium quartz be able to help cure your depression? And when you broke it down to an elemental level, he said, people are mostly minerals and water anyway. “You’re hydrated mineral powder,” he told me. “You are! You’re like Kool-Aid.”"