What I was reading this week while I was sick:
- NY Times: How to Shop for a Home That Won’t Be Upended by Climate Change. A lot of good advice here, but also a lot of it relies on government data. Some of it isn’t updated frequently enough (I lived in Houston for many years, so I’m intimately familiar with the failures of 100-year flood plain maps) but with the Trump purges, I wonder how reliable the data for some of these sources will be in the future.
- Beautiful Public Data: WWII Japanese Mass Incarceration collections. Unfortunately relevant.
- The Guardian: ‘Financial microaggressions’: why ‘pink tariffs’ hurt women more than men. Part of the complicated answer to the question of why women’s clothes are worse-made but more expensive than men. It’s not all sexism, but sexism in law and regulations is a part of it.
- BBC: How sex with Neanderthals changed us forever. 6 minute video, subtitled. If Neanderthals are a different species from humans, how did they interbreed? 1%-3% of Eurasian humans have Neanderthal DNA. Not a lot new in the conclusions if you’re up to date on the science but I didn’t know the specifics of the research.
- TV Guide: How Daredevil: Born Again Tackles the Punisher’s Real-World Legacy. Not a subject I would have expected to see in TV Guide, but it makes sense for them to go there.
- Tatler: The scintillating histories of the Mitford sisters, as anticipation for Outrageous reaches fever pitch. Potted short biographies of the Mitford sisters, if you’re into that kind of thing (I am).
- Dallas Observer: Bigger Isn’t Always Better: What Local Tiny Desk Concerts Tell Us About Dallas Music. I listen to Tiny Desk concerts occasionally and always enjoy them. I knew nothing about the background, so this was fascinating.
- Radley Balko’s The Watch: Trump’s modest proposal. It’s prima nocta. As a medievalist by training, I laughed.
- ProPublica: How Investigative Journalists Actually Find Fraud, Waste and Abuse. Compared to what “DOGE” does.
- The Oregonian: Many Portland-area residents say they never use government services. Actually, they do. People don’t know what the government does for them.
- AP: North Carolina judge challenging outcome of race wore Confederate uniform in college photo. Of course he did. “[H]e was a member of a college fraternity that glorified the pre-Civil War South.” Of course he was. Read the whole thing: this whole fraternity needs to be burned to the ground. And I say that as someone with slaveholders and Confederate soldiers in my family history. I acknowledge that past but I don’t celebrate it.
- NPR: Rosie the Riveters honored for service in WWII. Woke DEI history that we soon won’t be able to talk about.
- Yale News: Why don’t we remember being a baby? New study provides clues. The memories may still be there; we just can’t access them.
- The Mary Sue: John Boyega is right about Star Wars fans. A bunch of them are racist and sexist. Also, tbh, the powers that be didn’t do enough to shut down toxic fans and it’s a big problem with the sequel trilogy and the future of the Star Wars universe.
- The Nation: What’s a Rebel Pundit to Do in the Age of Trump? Bari Weiss is beneath contempt, as is Glenn Greenwald, but I am super disappointed in Matt Taibbi. He used to write good stuff when he was with Rolling Stone.
- Texas Highways: Engines of Optimism. The author went to all the public libraries in Austin. Now I want to do that in Dallas.
- Dallas Morning News: Public Editor: Why doesn’t ‘The News’ use ‘Gulf of America’? It appalls me that the DMN has to explain this stuff.
- Billy Bragg’s Substack: Happy 100th Birthday Tony Benn
- Tech Crunch: WordPress maker Automattic lays off 16% of staff. I love Tumblr and obviously I find WordPress useful. But man I worry about PhotoMatt (whom I was acquainted with back in the day) and where he’s taking the company.