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..."

December 2020

i rediscovered tv this month and have therefore stopped reading, lol.

safety not guarenteed (2012), how to change the world (2015), sky ladder: the art of cai guo-qiang (2016), ramen heads (2017), i feel pretty (2018), plus one (2019), last christmas (2019), happiest season, year one (2009), palm springs, neat: the story of bourbon (2018), crazy not insane

NYT Magazine - Taste Test
NYT - The Real Estate Collapse of 2020
The Verge -  Nature is not healing
BBC - The Family With No Fingerprints
Lifehacker - How They Made a Vaccine So Fast
Food 52 - The Lonely Legacy of Spam
Wired - The Devastating Allure of Medical Miracles
Huffington Post - The Myth of the Ethical Shopper
Atlas Obscura -  How a White Lie Gave Japan KFC for Christmas
Washington Post - Is It Okay to Laugh at Florida Man?
Texas Monthly - How the Unchecked Power of Judges Is Hurting Poor Texans
Quartz - Experts are sounding the alarm about the dangers of gas stoves
Politico - Washington's Secret to the Perfect Zoom Bookshelf? Buy It Wholesale.
NPR -  You Want To Move? Some Cities Will Pay You $10000 to Move There
Politico - Flint Has Clean Water Now. Why Won't People Drink It?
Vanity Fair - Inside the Very Big, Very Controversial Business of Dog Cloning
NPR - 'Toxic Individualism': Pandemic Politics Driving Health Care Workers From Small Towns.
The Guardian - The year of Karen: how a meme changed the way Americans talked about racism
Study International - More money goes into the US prison system than it does on education
Los Angeles Magazine - The Homeless Republic of Echo Park: life (and death) in L. A. 's fastest growing tent city.
Time - The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%—And That's Made the U.S. Less Secure.

Pro Publica - The Pandemic Hasn’t Stopped This School District From Suing Parents Over Unpaid Textbook Fees
WTF schools charge students for textbook rentals? that's total bullshit.
"Indiana is one of at least nine states that allow school districts to charge fees for required textbooks, according to the Education Commission of the States, a national education policy organization."
"Education advocates say that the state’s constitution guarantees a “tuition-free” education, not a free education."

Washington Post - As organized religion shrinks, faith-based charities worry about the future
As more people turn away from organized religion, churches and other worship communities face a struggle to keep marshaling their corps of volunteers. Churchgoers, mostly elderly, reliably turn up to staff food banks, clean up after hurricanes, and cook hot meals after natural disasters. Of the 74 groups that belong to the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, 40 are faith organizations. But the white Christian denominations to which most Americans used to belong are dwindling, and many younger people who consider themselves spiritual but unaffiliated will not replenish the supply of church volunteers and have no comparable institution around which to organize.

fivethirtyeight - Women Won The Right To Vote 100 Years Ago. They Didn’t Start Voting Differently From Men Until 1980.
Pew Research - Men and women in the U.S. continue to differ in voter turnout rate, party identification
"about half of U.S. adults (49%) – including 52% of men and 46% of women – say granting women the right to vote has been the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the country"

november 2020

still reading a lot. stayed off social media for a few days following the election, hoping not to get too caught up the drama. got laid off in the middle of the month and was suddenly then too busy to read, somehow, lol, but starting watching documentaries again.

capital in the 21st century (2019), the crown (season 4), tell me who I am (2019), kids the ground, sacred cow, human nature

NYT - He Married a Sociopath. Me.
Vox - America’s gun problem, explained
Bloomberg - The Global Fertility Crash
Popular Science - How humans created color for thousands of years
Curbed - Why we can’t build small homes anymore
Vox - The case for hiring more police officers
The Atlantic - The Accidental Experiment That Changed Men’s Lives
Popular Mechanics - The Truth is in the Muck
NPR - Twin Birthrate Drops For First Time Since The '80s
Smithsonian Magazine - The Science Behind Your Cheap Wine
Vox - Coronavirus is exposing all of the weaknesses in the US health system
ESPN - The ugly, gory, bloody secret life of NHL dentists
BBC - Lifting the lid on Japan’s amazing bento boxes
The Atlantic - Why Everything Is Getting Louder
BBC -  The cheap pen that changed writing forever
AP - Where you die can affect your chance of being an organ donor
Vox - The challenge of combating fake news in Asian American communities
The Atlantic - Why Most of America Is Terrible at Making Biscuits
Esquire -  The Crushing Reality of Zoom School
NPR - When Shoplifting Is A Felony: Retailers Back Harsher Penalties For Store Theft
Business of Fashion - How the Puffy Vest Became a Symbol of Power
FiveThirtyEight - Why Are Great Athletes More Likely To Be Younger Siblings?
The Guardian - .Should we stop keeping pets? Why more and more ethicists say yes
Medium - Forget Shutdowns. It’s ‘Demand Shock’ That’s Killing Our Economy.
Marie Claire - Inside the Growing Movement of Women Who Wish They'd Never Had Kids
Inverse - Lab-Grown Meat Also Creates an Benefit: Ethical Zebra Burgers
Mental Floss -  The Reason Why No Photography is Allowed in the Sistine Chapel
CNN - Crispy, spicy and hugely popular: Why chicken sandwiches are taking over America
Washington Post - To David Chang, the ‘ethnic’ food aisle is racist. Others say it’s convenient.
NPW - At The Mercy Of An App: Workers Feel The Instacart Squeeze
Art & Design - How the ‘Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World’ Got Its Logo
Harvard Business Review - A Short History of Golden Parachutes
FiveThirtyEight - What Should The Government Spend To Save A Life?
Marie Claire - To End Sexual Abuse in Churches, Dismantle Purity Culture
The Atlantic - How Pink Salt Took Over Millennial Kitchens
NPR - Now That More Americans Can Work From Anywhere, Many Are Planning To Move Away.
The Conversation - The long history of how Jesus came to resemble a white European
Bloomberg - Covid-19 Explodes the Myth That Women 'Opt' Out.
LA Times - Small turkeys are in high demand this Thanksgiving. Good luck finding one
National Geographic - Millennials and Gen Z are spreading coronavirus—but not because of parties and bars
Time - Low Wages, Sexual Harassment and Unreliable Tips. This Is Life in America’s Booming Service Industry
Refinery 29 - This Racist Form Of Voter Suppression Is Killing Democracy — & Nobody’s Talking About It
NBC - A fight over gifted education in New York is escalating a national debate over segregated schools
The Conversation - A quarter of US parents are unmarried – and that changes how much they invest in their kids
Bultimore Sun - John Waters bequeaths his art collection to Baltimore Museum of Art, whose bathrooms will be named in his honor  :D

The Atlantic - Why IVF Has Divided France
Apartment Therapy - Why 70 Percent Alcohol Disinfects Better Than 91 Percent, According to a Microbiologist

The Atlantic - Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers
I think the definition of a reader needs to be revised. I don't read many books anymore, but I read hella articles. I mean, obviously, look at this blog. I only note the interesting articles I've read that month, but I read at least 5 times more than what is listed. so I read at least 100 articles, on fairly broad topics, every month. assuming each article averages 5 minutes long, that's 500 minutes which is over 8 hours of reading articles a month. it's not much, but I think it definitely qualifies me as a "reader" even if it's not books. 

The Atlantic - What Happened to American Childhood?
"We know they affect nearly a third of adolescents ages 13 to 18, and that their median age of onset is 11, although some anxiety disorders start much earlier (the median age for a phobia to start is 7)."

The Atlantic - America's Health-Inequality Problem
"The U.S. has one of the largest income-based health disparities in the world... Only Chile and Portugal have a larger income-based gap in the health status of their citizens."
"Furthermore, while two-thirds of Americans report that “many” people in their country can’t access the health-care they need—10 percentage points higher than in any other country—Americans were less likely than average to say that it’s unfair that wealthier people can afford better health care. “We found that ethical concerns about the fairness of income-based health-care disparities were less common in the United States than in most of the other countries in our sample,” the authors write."

Vice - Brave: Corporations Stand In Solidarity With the Communities They Exploit
"In reality, the vast majority of these companies have business models explicitly designed to profit from what MLK called the “triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.” Dignified jobs have always been at the forefront of racial justice campaigns for good reason: Poverty is just another form of violence—“the worst form,” according to Mahatma Gandhi."

october 2020

j started working 3rd shift this month so I have a lot of quiet time. also, our tv broke and we didn't get one for a few days so I continued to clear out my inbox as a result. 

Buzzfeed - The Era Of Influencers Being Apolitical Online Is Over
ProPublica - California Will Keep Burning. But Housing Policy Is Making It Worse.
LA Times - Largest study of COVID-19 transmission highlights essential role of super-spreaders
Pew Research Center - Many Americans Get News on YouTube, Where News Organizations and Independent Producers Thrive Side by Side
Washington Post - For the first time in history, US billionaires paid a lower tax rate than the working class last year
Wall Street Journal - Americans Want Homes, but There Have Rarely Been Fewer for Sale.
The Guardian - World's richest 1% cause double CO2 emissions of poorest 50%, says Oxfam.
Axios - Democrats' Armageddon option
New York Magazine - Many GOP Voters Value America’s Whiteness More Than Its Democracy
Food 52 - The 2,000-Year-Old History of Vending Machines
The Guardian - Gun inequality: US study charts rise of hardcore super owners
BBC - What would happen if the world suddenly went vegetarian?
Business Insider - A searing new report claims opioid drugmakers spent 8 times as much as the NRA on lobbying
Vox - The hidden war over grocery shelf space
Wall Street Journal - Parents Don’t Want to Name Their Kids Mike Anymore
The Atlantic - Americans’ Bizarre Relationship With the Color of Their Food
FiveThirtyEight - We Asked 8,500 Internet Commenters Why They Do What They Do
The Guardian - The rise and fall of French cuisine
The Ringer - Will Write for Food
NPR - Your Name Might Shape Your Face, Researchers Say
Vox - Study: half of the studies you read about in the news are wrong
Popular Science - We need more 'body farms' to figure out how corpses rot
The Atlantic - Dude, She’s (Exactly 25 Percent) Out of Your League
NBC - How women in poverty are supplying America’s market for hair
Daily Beast - When The One Percent Sent Its Kids to War
The Verge - The Photography of Tump's Presidency is a Huge Break from Obama's
The Guardian - How we made the typeface Comic Sans
NYT - Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree.
The Atlantic - The Paradox of American Restaurants
NPR - Dr. Marijuana Pepsi Won't Change Her Name 'To Make Other People Happy'
The Guardian - Why do we think poor people are poor because of their own bad choices?
Fast Company - Free shipping is quietly changing the design of your favorite products
The Verge - Road Tripping with Amazon Nomads
NY Mag - Seniors Are More Conservative Because the Poor Don’t Survive to Become Seniors
Racked - It Costs $2.50 to Make Lipstick — Here’s Why You’re Charged So Much More
Vice - The Weird Science Behind Chain Restaurant Menus
The Atlantic  - Disposable America
Jezebel - The Strange, Sad Story of the Ken Doll's Crotch
The Thillist - How Ferrero Rocher Became a Status Symbol for Immigrant Families
The Guardian - Naomi Klein: how power profits from disaster
Bloomberg City Lab - Take a Seat: 5 Brilliant Bus Stop Fixes
The Outline - You can’t just put homeless people in tiny houses
Nautilus - Why Revolutionaries Love Spicy Food
Mental Floss - Meet the Two Women Who Give Prescription Drugs Their Generic Names
Medium - Bug Breeders Are Cultivating Waste-Guzzling Flies to Gobble Up America's Trash
Refinery 29 - We Are Now The United States Of GoFundMe
The Atlantic - The Little College Where Tuition Is Free and Every Student Is Given a Job
NBC - Want to go to the movies? There's an airplane for that
The New Republic - The Fight for the Right to Be Cremated by Water
Longreads - The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Perfume
Bloomberg CityLab - How School Districts Seal Their Students Into Poverty
Barking Up the Wrong Tree - Is bad truly stronger than good?
The Guardian - The fatal, hateful rise of choking during sex
Telegraph UK - When daylight kills
NYT - How a Brand Name Becomes Generic
Barking Up the Wrong Tree - Do women and men have different moral values?
The Atlantic - What George W Bush Plans to Do About Trump
Elle - Senator Gary Peters Shares His Abortion Story
World ABC News - A B.C. research project gave homeless people $7,500 each — the results were ‘beautifully surprising’
Fast Company - A hospital introduced a robot to help nurses. They didn’t expect it to be so popular
The Guardian - 'This guy doesn't know anything': the inside story of Trump's shambolic transition team.
Medium - Turns Out Immigrant Parents Were Right About Everything
Miami New Times - Woman Who Likes Trump's Smile: "I Wish He Would Smile More and Talk Less"
BBC - How modern life is transforming the human skeleton
ART News - The Surprising Power of Color to Ease Quarantine Anxiety
Axios - New culture war: The meaning of white privilege
History - How an Accidental Invention Changed What Americans Eat for Breakfast

NYT - Study Finds ‘Single Largest Driver’ of Coronavirus Misinformation: Trump
USA Today - Rigged: Forced into debt. Worked past exhaustion. Left with nothing.
NYT - Blue Cities Want to Make Their Own Rules. Red States Won’t Let Them
The Guardian - The trouble with charitable billionaires
NBC News - What if you call 911 and no one comes?
NBC News - Why are many of America's military families going hungry?
USA Today - America's parents want paid family leave and affordable child care. Why can't they get it?
LA Times - One is Chinese. One is American. How a journalist discovered and reunited identical twins (I watched this documentary! One Child Nation)

Vox - Extreme poverty is getting worse across the globe for the first time in decades
Axios - Study: 8 million Americans have fallen into poverty since May

FiveThirtyEight - Millennials Are Leaving Religion And Not Coming Back
Pacific Standard - Why Atheists Terrify Believers

The Atlantic - Every Culture Appropriates
appropriation is different from appreciation, tho sometimes they can be mixed. the banh mi example. there's nothing really about that that reflects an actual banh mi. it uses different ingredients, and uses them differently it's just a plain sandwich, not reflective of a banh mi at all. the prom dress is appreciative. she liked the dress, liked how she looked in it, awesome. had she put her hair up in a bun with chopsticks and carried a purse that looked like takeout box, no good. cause that's a fucking stereotype and not appreciative or respectful at all. 

Fast Company - Bananas have died out once before–don’t let it happen again
"...there is no genetic difference between them. Plantation bananas are sterile and produced via cloning; baby banana plants sprout from the base of adult banana plants, identicals in miniature of the adjacent giants they will soon become."

NYT - It’s Not Just Mike Pence. Americans Are Wary of Being Alone With the Opposite Sex.
"A majority of women, and nearly half of men, say it’s unacceptable to have dinner or drinks alone with someone of the opposite sex other than their spouse."
I find these numbers so surprising! maybe it's part of living in a "big city" but these rules seem so antiquated. and i can't even imagine my life like this? so many of my interactions are one on one, with women and men. I think most of my outside meals are just between me an one other person. I think that other person (even outside joe) is usually a man! maybe it's cause i'm introverted also? and kind of of guy's girl? I can't get over this, lol. 

NPR - Ramen To The Rescue: How Instant Noodles Fight Global Hunger
NPR - 'Cup Noodles' Turns 45: A Closer Look At The Revolutionary Ramen Creation
"To serve its global customers, Nissin makes culturally specific adaptations, like different flavors for different national palates. Even the length of noodle changes... "Americans don't like to slurp their noodles. So they make the length of the noodles for the American version smaller so they don't have to suck it up.."

Tech Crunch - Writer Anand Giridharadas on tech’s billionaires: “Are they even on the same team as us?”
"I often say that the government at its best is like a lawyer for all of us. The government is like ‘Why don’t we check out these car seats for you and create some rules around them, and then you can just buy a car seat and not have to wonder whether it’s the kind that protects your child or crumbles?’ That’s what the government does for all kinds of things."

Slate - Is Lab-Grown Meat Really Meat?
"By 1900, it was illegal in 30 states to dye margarine yellow, and a handful of states went even further, dictating that margarine had to be dyed an unappetizing pink. Canada outright banned margarine until 1948."

Vox - Millennials have very little confidence in most major institutions
this article is from 2016, so I'm sure things have changed, but it's still crazy to see that millennials had the most trust in the fucking military. "post" covid, I have more trust in governors and mayors. certainly not in every state and city, but at least in mine.

BuzzFeed - When You’re Trans, Living With Your Parents Can Be Complicated
"Nationally, 40% of homeless youth are queer or trans."
"Last month, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that homeless shelters be allowed to deny access to trans people, overriding the 2012 Equal Access rule that bans discrimination in public housing, federally funded shelters, and federally backed mortgages on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and marital status"

BBC - Is this the most powerful word in the English language?
"According to Culpeper, men say ‘the’ significantly more frequently. Deborah Tannen, an American linguist, has a hypothesis that men deal more in report and women more in rapport – this could explain why men use ‘the’ more often. Depending on context and background, in more traditional power structures, a woman may also have been socialised not to take the voice of authority so might use ‘the’ less frequently. Though any such gender-based generalisations also depend on the nature of the topic being studied. Those in higher status positions also use ‘the’ more – it can be a signal of their prestige and (self) importance."