1) I still think Honeycrisp are overrated, but I always love learning more about apples. And, I must admit, I’m pretty excited about the coming Cosmic Crisp. Also, somehow missed this excellent NPR article about “club apples” from a few years ago.
2) Absolutely an under-covered story this election is Republican voter-supression efforts. Ari Berman in the NYT:
In Georgia and other states, the question in this election is not just about which candidates voters will support, but whether they’ll be able to cast a ballot in the first place. The fight over voting rights in the midterms is a reminder that elections are not solely about who is running, what their commercials say or how many people are registered to vote. They are about who is allowed to vote and which officials are placing obstacles in the way of would-be voters.
The issue of voter suppression has exploded in recent weeks, most notably in the Georgia governor’s race between Stacey Abrams, a Democrat, and Brian Kemp, a Republican. While running for higher office, Mr. Kemp, as secretary of state, also enforces Georgia’s voting laws. This month, The Associated Press reported that Mr. Kemp’s office had put more than 53,000 voter registration applications in limbo because the information on the forms did not exactly match state databases. Seventy percent of the pending registrations were from African-Americans, leading Ms. Abrams to charge that Mr. Kemp was trying “to tilt the playing field in his favor.” Mr. Kemp claimed a voter registration group tied to Ms. Abrams had “submitted sloppy forms.”
Since the 2010 election, 24 states overwhelmingly controlled by Republicans have put in place new voting restrictions, such as tougher voter ID laws, cutbacks to early voting and barriers to registration. Republicans say these measures are necessary to combat the threat of widespread voter fraud, even though study after study shows that such fraud is exceedingly rare. Many of these states have hotly contested races in 2018, and a drop in turnout among Democratic constituencies, such as young people and voters of color, could keep Republicans in power.
3) And the Atlantic’s Van Newkirk II:
Democracy in America is only a little over five decades old. That’s difficult to square with the America that exists in the storytelling tradition: a brave experiment in a government run for and by the people. In reality, the country has always been defined as much by whom it’s kept from voting as by who is allowed to participate, and the ideal of democracy has always been limited by institutions designed to disenfranchise. Put another way: The great majority of all elections in American history would have been entirely illegitimate under modern law.
It seems even today’s elections would have difficulty meeting those standards. Claims of voter suppression have multiplied during the 2018 midterm-election cycle. Gerrymanders dilute black and Latino votes. Voter-ID laws in some states disproportionately affect people of color. Polling-place changes, lines, and irregularities still characterize the voting experiences of many communities of color. In Georgia, the Republican candidate for governor—the state’s secretary of state, Brian Kemp—is facing a lawsuit over allegedly racially biased voter purges. American democracy finds itself at a crossroads, and a future where more suppression is the norm seems like a strong possibility…
Regardless of the outcome, these tactics will make an indelible historical mark on the Georgia election. In that, it’s the vanguard of a new norm rather than an outlier. Since the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, in which the Supreme Court defanged federal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, the Court has taken an ax to the stump of voter protections that remained.
In June of this year, the Court gave its blessing to aggressive voter purges, even those that all existing data indicate affect minority communities most. The Court has moved toward extending authorization for voter-ID laws, despite data showing the same. Adding to the Court’s finding in Shelby County that past disenfranchisement was no longer a valid factor in developing current protections against disenfranchisement, the Court argued that “good faith of [the] state legislature must be presumed,” when it upheld Texas congressional districts that were challenged as racial gerrymanders.
So far, the results have been undeniable. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, up to 2 million more people than expected have lost their voting status because of purges after Shelby County. Also according to the Brennan Center, 23 states have made their voting laws more restrictive since 2010, including six of the 10 states with the highest proportions of black voters. And that count doesn’t include North Carolina, the state with the seventh-highest population of black voters, where a battle involving voter ID, gerrymandering, and racial discrimination has dominated politics over the past decade. Nor does it include Texas, now a major battleground for voter-ID laws and gerrymandering plans that mostly affect its high population of Latino voters.
4) Getting adolescent boys to talk about their feelings. Hell, yeah.
“In here, we get to say stuff we wouldn’t normally say in front of other people. And we don’t judge each other,” said a seventh grader with dark curls. “Boys should have a safe space to talk about things that matter to us,” said another seventh grader with a hint of a Canadian accent.
The two were veterans of a weekly lunch time boys’ group at the Sheridan School, a K-8 private school in Northwest Washington, D.C., explaining the group’s purpose to new members.
Hands went up, thumbs and pinkies wagged back and forth in the shaka or “hang loose” hand gesture, which signifies full agreement at Sheridan. The group’s primary adviser, Phyllis Fagell, started an activity she called the “man box.” She called out a feeling or emotion, and the boys were supposed to determine if it belonged inside or outside of this figurative container of masculine stereotypes.
The 11 middle-school boys quickly agreed that none of the following belonged in the “man box”: trust, sadness, tenderness, patience, fear, insecurity, confusion, feeling overwhelmed and joy.
“You just eliminated 80 percent of human emotions from the male experience,” said Ms. Fagell, who is the school counselor. “Does that surprise you?”
5) Does living together before marriage increase the likelihood of divorce? Maybe, maybe not. (But it does increase the likelihood of going to hell! Sorry, couldn’t resist). Seriously, researchers still cannot come to a consensus.
6) Drum’s Q&A on Trump’s oddly sensible proposal on prescription drug prices is the best thing I’ve read on it:
Q: This is great! Right now I pay about $400 in annual premiums and another $1,800 in deductibles and copays for my prescription drugs through Medicare. This could really make a—
A: Hold on, cowboy. Just settle down. Let’s get one thing straight right off: Trump’s announcement has nothing to do with your prescription drug plan.
Q: Wait. What?
A: You’re thinking of Medicare Part D, which was passed in 2003. It covers prescription drugs for seniors, but Republicans specifically prohibited Medicare from negotiating prices on Part D and there’s nothing Trump can do about that. Democrats tried to pass a bill changing this a few years ago, but Republicans filibustered it and it failed.
Q: So Trump is asking them to take another look?
A: Nope. Democrats proposed yet another bill last year that would have allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices, but Republicans killed it and Trump just shrugged. He was too busy trying to dismantle Obamacare. Nothing is changing there.
7) It’s so fascinating the way complex ecosystems are connected. And really disturbing how human actions can throw these all out of balance. On the California coast, sea urchins are gobbling up all the kelp.
8) Interesting idea– battery swapping as a faster and more efficient way to charge electric vehicles.
9) The case for teaching loneliness prevention in our schools:
The ideal school curriculum for teaching loneliness prevention, Holt-Lunstad says, would target social isolation as well as the cognitive processes that make people feel lonelier—while, of course, teaching students the health risks associated with loneliness. “Recognizing that it’s something that we need to take seriously for our health is a primary and critical step,” she says.
Holt-Lunstad advocates for a sort of “social education”—similar to efforts by schools to provide, say, sex education and physical education—that would be integrated into existing health-education curricula to teach students how to build and maintain friendships and relationships. Learning how to provide the kind of help and support a friend or partner feels a need for is an invaluable social skill that can be taught in the classroom, she adds. For example, when a friend who is broke asks for money but instead receives a lecture on financial management, she isn’t likely to feel she’s been supported in the way she needs.
10) Initiatives in California and Florida could require more humane treatment animals. Since the legislatures are obviously far more influenced by Big Agriculture, this is one way to get policy more in line with what the public actually thinks:
Most Americans aren’t vegetarians or vegans, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t concerned with the welfare of animals. Nearly everyone consumes animals that are raised and killed on factory farms (over 99 percent of land animals raised for food are, so even “humane”-labeled food is typically factory-farmed). But even most meat-eating Americans are strongly opposed to the abuses that are commonplace in the industry. In a 2017 Ipsos/Sentience Institute poll, 49 percent of Americans supported a ban on factory farming, nearly 90 percent thought “farmed animals have roughly the same ability to feel pain and discomfort as humans,” and nearly 70 percent agreed that “the factory farming of animals is one of the most important social issues in the world today.”
11) Nice video of Donald Trump advocating political violence time and time again.
12) David Brooks embracing the “nationalist” tag in defense of Trump is pretty pathetic and disgusting. A great example of NYT commenters being far smarter than the writer in pointing out that Brooks is really talking about “patriotism” and saying “nationalism” for Trump’s benefit.
13) Column in Chronicle of Higher Education advocating lowering the stakes of the job interview dinner. Good God I would never want a job at a place that chose against me because I prefer pizza and Diet Dr Pepper over sushi and beer. My experience… people on the search committee want a free dinner at a fancy restaurant and really don’t care much about what the job candidate eats.
14) My friend and colleague Mark Nance on why North Carolinians should vote against the 6 misleading Constitutional amendments the Republicans put onto our ballot.
15) How a controversial on-line charter school is having a surprisingly large impact on Ohio politics.
16) Interesting piece in the Atlantic, “College Sports Are Affirmative Action for Rich White Students: Athletes are often held to a lower standard by admissions officers, and in the Ivy League, 65 percent of players are white.”
17) EJ Dionne on the Republicans’ long con on the deficit:
A truly gifted con artist is someone who pulls off the same scam again and again and keeps getting away with it.
Say what you will about Republicans and conservatives: Their audacity when it comes to deficits and tax cuts is something to behold, and they have been running the same play since the passage of the Reagan tax cuts in 1981.
Republicans shout loudly about how terrible deficits are when Democrats are in power — even in cases when deficits are essential to pulling the nation out of economic catastrophe, as was the case at the beginning of President Barack Obama’s first term.
But when the GOP takes control, its legions cheerfully embrace Dick Cheney’s law and send deficits soaring. Recall what President George W. Bush’s vice president said in 2002 justifying the 2003 tax cuts: “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.”
Deficits don’t matter if they would impede handing out tax benefits to corporations and the affluent. But they put us “on the brink of national bankruptcy” and threaten “a debt crisis,” as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) put it in 2011, when Democrats want to finance programs for the middle class or the poor.
And here’s the critical insight:
Republicans know one other thing: Their deception will work as long as neutral arbiters — in the media and think tanks along with those who genuinely care about deficits — fail to call it out…[emphasis mine]
So here is my plea to the honest deficit hawks out there: Please face up to how right-wing policies are doubly damaging to national solvency. They raise deficits by reducing revenues. But they also endanger us by aggravating inequalities that themselves imperil sustainable budgets and a growing economy. This is worse than a swindle. It’s a dangerous mistake.
18) Disturbing new evidence on the use of antibiotics in livestock farming:
Now a new study, years in the making, goes further than any other to demonstrate that resistant bacteria can move from animals to humans via the meat they become. It also provides a model of how new surveillance systems might reduce that bacterial flow at its source on farms.
It’s just one study, but it possesses outsize significance, because it eliminates the uncertainty at the center of that bacterial flow. Outside of experimental conditions, it’s never been possible to prove that this antibiotic given to thatanimal gave rise to this bacterium that ended up in thathuman. But this new work dives so deeply into the genomics of bacterial adaptation in food animals and humans, it proves the link that ag would rather deny.
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