For Your Enjoyment #48

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Smartwatches are the default wearable option these days, but why is it so hard to find simple yet affordable alternatives like the fitness bands of yesteryear?

– I miss basic fitness trackers (pictured above: my trusty Jawbone Up in 2013)

Whatever you believed about Albany, about America, about teenagers, racism, sexism, social media, punishment and the public discourse on each of these topics, the story of the Instagram account could be marshaled as evidence. It was the incident that explained everything and yet also the incident that couldn’t be explained.

– This longread about a racist Instagram account that devastated Albany High is heavy but worthwhile

From the moment he sauntered into the league, “The Answer,” as he was nicknamed, sparked nothing but stereotypical questions deep in my old-school, Oklahoma City–bred psyche. I misunderstood, misjudged, missed the point on Allen Iverson.

– DWade’s 2023 HOF speech seemed like as good a time as any to revisit this piece by Skip Bayless

I was punished when I cried, and my parents spun tales of my accomplishments until the tidal wave of my failures quotidian and spectacular overwhelmed their narrative. I have lived my life in fear of being found out: as Chinese, perhaps, but really as stupid and ugly and not good enough and incapable of ever being so. But here’s Quan, the same as he was when he was a kid, embodying all of the qualities that actually matter in the pursuit of a life well-lived: love for and faith in the people in your life who see you, and the candid recollection of the journey it took to get you to a place where you can finally see yourself. It’s not the awards that matter, it’s only this. I used to be embarrassed to be set against Quan in some way; now I can’t imagine a kinder comparison. I’m old, but I’m teachable. Maybe there’s hope for us, yet.

– “It Took Me Nearly 40 Years To Stop Resenting Ke Huy Quan” – Read this.

Rock historian Bruno MacDonald, writing for the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, summed up the record's genius thus: "An exorcism of childhood demons? A megalomaniac's masterpiece? A full hour of hard-rock humdingers? Siamese Dream is all this and more."

– Is Siamese Dream the greatest album of 1993? (Answer: To me? Yes.)

Out of all those great rock records that came out in the first five years of the 90s, not many sound better the further down the line you get from it in the way that Purple does. Some of those albums are brilliant precisely because they are wedded to that era, but something about Purple is better floating out of time. It could be the sheer sense of exuberance in the music. Or that feeling of a lyricist giving his words both an emotional depth and a swagger. Or maybe it’s just because the brilliance of this record at the time was tainted by so many being a bit snooty towards Stone Temple Pilots for reasons that seem quite ludicrous now. It was an era when the Authenticity Police were on patrol, and perhaps STP were pulled over for looking like they were having too much of a good time.

– Revisiting another 90s classic

Edward Blum has been working toward the end of race-based admissions in higher education for years. He first brought the issue of affirmative action before the Supreme Court in 2012, with Fisher v. University of Texas – a case he ended up losing. Since then, the 71-year-old legal activist has founded a group called Students for Fair Admissions, which just won at the Supreme Court against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, in a decision that effectively ended race-based affirmative action policies in American college admissions.

– The NYT interviews Edward Blum

Let’s face it, when you’re a college-educated 57-year-old slinging parcels for a living, something in your life has not gone according to plan. That said, my moments of chagrin are far outnumbered by the upsides of the job, which include windfall connections with grateful strangers. There’s a certain novelty, after decades at a legacy media company –Time Inc. – in playing for the team that’s winning big, that’s not considered a dinosaur, even if that team is paying me $17 an hour (plus OT!). It’s been healthy for me, a fair-haired Anglo-Saxon with a Roman numeral in my name (John Austin Murphy III), to be a minority in my workplace, and in some of the neighborhoods where I deliver. As Amazon reaches maximum ubiquity in our lives (“Alexa, play Led Zeppelin”), as online shopping turns malls into mausoleums, it’s been illuminating to see exactly how a package makes the final leg of its journey.

– "I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon.”

For Your Enjoyment #46

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Ladies and gentlemen, sows and boars, the Fattest Bear of 2018 is… 409 Beadnose! Her radiant rolls were deemed by the voting public to be this year’s most fabulous flab. Our chubby champ has a few more weeks to chow down on lingering salmon carcasses before she heads up the mountains to dig herself a den and savor her victory. What does the she win for all this hard work? Stronger chances of living through the winter.

- This may be old news (c. October 2018), but I’m already looking ahead to Fat Bear Week 2019 (image above)

There’s nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies. 

- A great little anecdote from Douglas Adams (h/t DM)

"San Francisco is like living in Disney World," said Woolson, a writer and designer. "There's no place like it, and if it were affordable, I'm sure I'd move back. But there's tradeoffs - everyone knows about the city already, they're so high on themselves." The Town, on the other hand, is less "showboat-y," he said. "Oakland is not out to impress anybody."

- The Town v. The City

“It was a very awkward time. I guess I kind of lost control of the faculty at some point,” [David Badger, Key School headmaster in the mid-1970s] said. “I thought they were good teachers. I thought they were honest people. I think I was naive as hell.”

- Oof, Obezags

America has the same conversation after each mass shooting – the inevitable debate about gun control versus mental-health care (rarely both at the same time). It becomes factionalised, politicised and nothing changes. Then the next mass shooting happens. But it occurred to me that the one person we never speak to about mass shootings is the mass shooter himself (and it is, almost always, a him) – perhaps because they too often kill themselves or are dispatched by police. But if we could, we might ask them this: what would have stopped you doing what you did?

- This longread is heavy but worth a read when you’re ready

Six speakers are placed atop individual plinths and attached to an MP3 player that contains only the song; the entire thing is powered by solar energy with the promise that it will run "for all eternity."

- And now for some lighter topics: All Toto, All The Time

[The] Malaysian busker was about to call it day, as not many people gathered around to hear him sing. Just as he started to sing for fun, the cutest little audience showed up…

- Best crowd ever!

“The first sweater I made of a specific landmark was the Tower Bridge in London,” remembers [Sam] Barsky. “I was inspired by a picture I saw in a magazine. I had never been there before and did not make it for a specific trip. But, once I started knitting more landmarks, like the Golden Gate Bridge and Venice, I knew I wanted to go there while wearing them.”

- This guy though

We can do better in 2019. We must. There are, of course, many predictable ways to go about it. We can limit our exposure to the raw sewage of social media. We can turn off the cable news networks and opinion-bellowing podcasts to which we have turned to reinforce the beliefs we already had. We can meditate and run and get eight good hours of sleep a night. Enjoy all of that, and I'll see you when we're finished with it on January 6. But there is something else. Something deeper, more difficult and no less necessary. Something that can go a long way toward washing our souls clean of the cruelty that is the hallmark of our modern society. Something that can help prepare us for a 2019 that promises to be more exhausting, more bewildering, more chock full o' nuts. My friends, we must reckon with what we have done to Hootie and the Blowfish.

- No time for haters this year

In some circles, Collins is the apotheosis of blandness and ubiquity, the byword for the bleaching of soul music, the man who killed Genesis and gave American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman a reason, and a soundtrack, to screw and kill. But for a musician who can count Kanye West, 2Pac, Nas and Ol’ Dirty Bastard as fans, how can he be considered almost terminally uncool?

- In other musician-hating news, here’s a bit on Phil Collins

It’s crazy….. people really are just out here saying that I stood for baggy clothes? Or that I stood for fitteds? Or cornrows? Or tattoos? Or throwbacks? Or anything like that? Nah, come on. What I stood for was something way deeper. I mean — to me, if I had to sum it up? I’d say I stood for being yourself.

- This AI essay for The Players Tribune is worth a read

With major implications on everything from the classroom to the church pews, from the Capitol to the dinner table, an unrelenting demographic shift has hit a major milestone: Fewer than half the people living in Salt Lake County are on the rolls of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints … Salt Lake County has not only become less LDS over time, it also has added more people from various racial or ethnic backgrounds.

- SLC: Slowly Becoming Less Mormon and Less White?

Utah ranks No. 1 among the states for its population growth rate this decade – thanks to its high birthrate plus a strong economy that attracts people from other states and abroad…With immigration increases over recent years, [Pam Perlich, director of demographic research at the University of Utah's Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute] said, “We are on our way to becoming a very large global metropolitan area. We can expect the continued arrival of international people because the labor market is global at this point.”

- Guess we’re all moving to Utah these days

We can’t quite put our finger on why, but Washington, DC, is feeling a bit tense lately. If the idea of taking a tour of the Capitol Building has you breaking out in a cold sweat, it’s time to turn your attention to the other nearby towns in the mid-Atlantic area, like beautiful, blood-pressure-lowering Annapolis.

- The Matador knows what’s up

[M]osquitoes really don’t have many defenders, even among the scientists who know them most intimately. The idea of eradicating mosquitoes to stop malaria doesn’t particularly bother Steven Juliano, a mosquito-ecology researcher at Illinois State University. “It might be worth losing one species,” he says. “It might be worth it because the burden of human suffering is pretty high.”

- What would happen if mosquitoes were to disappear?

Hygge, a Danish word defined as "a quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being," has been practically weaponised in recent years in an effort to sell candles, socks, and blankets. Hygge was never a lifestyle, but it's certainly marketed as one over here by people wishing to cash in on the Scandi-zeitgeist.

- Hygge appropriation

The Ruth Bader Ginsburg celebration, therefore, isn’t strictly about RBG at all; it’s about DJT. With a president who knowingly sets himself up as an icon of one pole of American politics, it’s about picking (or even inventing) a rival icon to rally around – a way to rebel against a president who openly vows to fill the nation’s courtrooms with like-minded judges, most of them hostile to the concepts of due process and equal protection that liberals hold dear. But in its very presence as an anti-movement, a liberal call to arms to thwart Trump and Mitch McConnell and the Federalist Society, the cult of RBG furthers the politicization of the court. It’s a form of surrender to the “everything’s political” argument that enables Trump to traduce boundaries of propriety that have existed for decades, dismissing the existence of any sort of independence or professionalism in government institutions.

- RBG fever vs. the politicizing of the Supreme Court

“Typically, women should have fair skin, be 162cm to 168cm tall [over 170cm is too tall] … weigh less than 48kg, have large eyes, a perfect nose, and long hair,” said the Korean gender studies expert. “These standards are common when applying for part-time jobs that don’t require much skill. ‘If a cashier is pretty then customers will enjoy the experience better, [therefore] we should hire pretty girls’ – this becomes treated like a true statement.” 

- South Korea’s beauty standards are out of control

While Wallace Stegner’s notion that parks are “America’s best idea” has become synonymous with the nation’s love for them, there’s a little more to his famous 1983 line. The Pulitzer prize winner went on to describe the parks as a mirror for America’s national character: “They reflect us at our best rather than our worst.” Considering the problems besetting them, his sentiment now seems open to question.

- Our love for the NPS and the problem of over-tourism

To be called GOAT these days, you can merely be among the best, or popular in that moment, or a really good quarterback with one ring. Folks talk GOAT if you win the first five starts of your NFL career. There are allegedly two GOATs on the same high school football team and three GOATs in the same sport. Do we not understand the meaning of the word “greatest” – that there can be only one?

- “We’re being overrun by a herd of GOATs”

There’s a vibe here. You see it in the other guys and in Coach Kerr and the front office, and you feel it in the staff and everyone else. Nobody is thinking about anything but a championship. They carry themselves like it. I’ve been missing basketball — and playing ball, that’s what it’s always been about for me. I found a new place where I’m being welcomed with open arms. I’ll be back at 100% this season. A year from now, looking back, I know this is going to be the best decision I ever made.

- BOOGIE

…And finally, courtesy of the LA Times, here are "Five hopeful poems to usher in the new year”

For Your Enjoyment #45

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More than a year in the making, our new adventure jumpsuit was inspired by one of our customer favorites, the REI Co-op Sahara Convertible pants. They’re comfortable and attractive, with a zip-off design that takes them from pants to shorts. But why stop there? Why not four zippers per leg for even more adjustability? For that matter, why even stop at pants? We asked ourselves: What would the world look like if you could have a single piece of hyperlight, super-breathable and ultra-warm apparel?

- REI's April Fools' product is SO GOOD (video above)

Dubbed “Project Sage Hopper” by the WWGD team responsible for evaluating the viability of Wyoming’s habitat for Australian marsupials, it has been in the planning stages for 3 years. The goal is two-fold: Create new and interesting wildlife viewing opportunities for tourists, and in several years, potentially provide additional hunting opportunities. “Antilopine means ‘antelope-like, so we are interested to see how these kangaroos adapt to Wyoming’s wild landscapes,” WMI Director Matt Kauffman said. “If they start migrating, we’ll be tracking their movements, looking to see how they learn to exploit the sage steppe and the mountains, where they ‘hopover,’ those sorts of things.”

- Another great April Fools' story (read a response from the news outlet here)

In the course of promoting his infrastructure plan, [Trump], a bit perplexingly, dismissed the country’s community colleges, suggesting he doesn’t know what purpose they serve. “We do not know what a ‘community college’ means,” he told the crowd in an Ohio training facility for construction apprentices, moments after expressing nostalgia for the vocational schools that flourished when he was growing up – schools that offered hands-on training in fields such as welding and cosmetology.

- Just stop. 

“It doesn’t matter what era we live in – visibility is so important because … little queer kids need to see flamey people like me and Jonathan [Van Ness],” Kressley said. “It’s okay to be any kind of person you want to be; it’s okay to be who you are. I think that’s why it’s important that it’s back.”

- The OG cast of "Queer Eye" on the new reboot

"Tomi the bear was forced to live in a cramped concrete enclosure outside a restaurant in Albania where he was fed beer and white bread as an attraction for tourists," Claire LaFrance, communications director for Four Paws, told The Dodo. His rescuers believe that Tomi was in that terrible little cage ever since he was a baby. "We assume that Tomi was caught in the wild as a cub and had been living in the squalid conditions for roughly two years before we rescued him," LaFrance said. Even though he could glimpse that there was a world outside his cage, all poor Tomi could really sense was the cold concrete floor and the bars around him. But people were determined to make sure Tomi got to experience much more than that.

- Read more about Tomi and and other rescued bears over here and here (warning: you may shed a few tears of happiness) 

For decade after decade, generation after generation, [National Geographic] reinforced and reflected racial stereotypes that its white American readers were accustomed to and with which they were largely comfortable. Flick through back issues and you see a magazine almost entirely at ease with this colonial mindset. Had that all begun to change in the 1960s, during the era of civil rights and decolonisation, there would be no need for a “race issue” in 2018. But it didn’t.

- "For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It."

[The Hazelton, PA annual festival] Funfest became too scary. Too uncomfortable. To be honest … too brown. “You just know if you go to a public event, you know you are going to be outnumbered,” Sally Yale says. “You know you’re going to be the minority, and do you want to go?” For Yale, the answer was no. “We joke about it and say we are in the minority now,” says Bob Sacco, a bartender at A&L Lounge, a tavern on a street now mainly filled with Latino-owned storefronts. “They took over the city. We joke about it all the time, but it’s more than a joke.”

- (Not-so) White America 

 ‘Two cats + feral toms = 24 kittens in one year, and that is with us ACTIVELY trying to trap/neuter/release. If we hadn’t? CATPOCALYPSE.’

- This couple went from having 0 cats to 24 rescued kittens.

[San Francisco's] Japantown is not as picturesque as the tourist magnet of Chinatown, that’s several big hills east of here – but it has its own story to tell. The Japanese moved to this area after the 1906 earthquake, when the areas where they then lived burned down. J-Town has had to weather two other cataclysms: the internment of its 5,000 inhabitants during the second world war and an urban renewal scheme in the 1960s that saw most of its original buildings bulldozed. “My family was displaced by the scheme,” says Richard Hashimoto, the current head of the Japantown Merchants’ Association. “Many never came back. We went from 36 [city] blocks to nine. And, with the current tech-driven real-estate boom in the city, the mom-and-pop businesses that did make it have another struggle.” ... “Persistence is our story,” Hashimoto says. “The challenge for our small family businesses is both with rising real-estate costs and seeing if the next generation will will carry on the business.”

- SF's Japantown: its history, its culture and its future

"Overall very good first impressions. Sturdy built, totally winter-ready and waterproof. Only comes in brown but that’s actually a plus for me."

- The internets' #rateaspecies is really good

Claire’s Stores Inc., the fashion accessories chain where legions of preteens got their ears pierced, is preparing to file for bankruptcy in the coming weeks, according to people with knowledge of the plans.

- There goes my childhood

The same industry – composed of reality television and gossip blogs – that aided and exploited [Paris] Hilton's rise also eroded her celebrity. The Simple Life was, in fact, remarkably simple, a narrative playing up a caricature of Hilton that operated in a bubble apart from the real world. And while she was able to parlay that reality television persona into a lucrative fragrance and fashion brand (and a forever-iconic pop single, if not a full-fledged pop career), she didn’t keep up with the changes of the reality-celebrity landscape … By the time Kim Kardashian appeared on the scene, Hilton had become an emblem of a quaint past where mystery could still work as PR strategy, rather than a part of the media future where nothing is private and everything – if you look at it the right way – is content.

- "Why Paris Hilton Disappeared"

Similar to the rise of Cardi B, the way [Tiffany] Haddish presents herself is simply too loud, too black and too woman. A potpourri of all three. Or how Mo’Nique “had a point,” but the way she said it wasn’t sitting right with some folks. Haddish is the latest black woman accused of “cooning,” “skinnin’ and grinnin’” and “shuckin’ and jivin’.” So, I have to ask, if Haddish is doing the Nae Nae for the white gaze, who is your respectability politics boogie for? At a time when it is trendy to be “unapologetically black,” there’s something about the way certain “blackness” is excluded that doesn’t quite curl all the way over. You can’t be unapologetic with an asterisk.

- "It's Hot to Be Unapologetically Black...Unless"

The Wire avoided victories, preferring to show corruption, failure and decay. In this show, reformers would be thwarted, crooks rewarded and ordinary people ground down by the system. The Wire was as much journalism as entertainment – a form of protest television. The most frequent question asked in this writers’ room was: “What are we saying?”

- The Wire: 10 years later 

Lifestyle vintners have also left their mark on Napa’s landscape. Most refer to themselves with straight faces as “farmers,” even as “environmentalists,” while more trees are cut on surrounding mountainsides for yet more vineyards. They loudly praise the valley’s exemplary past and glorious future while exploiting its present. 

- Rich people are ruining wine

[T]hese efforts to create warriors out of teachers as a means of addressing school shootings are wrongheaded. I used to be in the Marines, and now I'm a classroom teacher. From these experiences, there is one thing I know to be true: Responding effectively to an active-shooter situation is one of the toughest challenges for a marksman out there. To train teachers for this role would be an enormous task – and policymakers who think otherwise aren’t being realistic. Over the course of my time in the Marines, I trained on various heavy machine guns for the purpose of convoy operations, and consider myself to be proficient with a firearm. But none of the skills I learned would truly transfer into an active-shooter situation.

- Teachers are not soldiers

Once in front of the portraits, most museum goers did one of three things: They held up their mobile phone to take a picture of the painting; they turned around to snap a selfie with the painting as backdrop; or they posed next to the portraits for a companion to take a souvenir shot. What hardly anyone did was this: Raise their eyes from their mobile phone and use their allotted time to gaze up at the arresting, symbol-laden canvases.

- As someone who struggles with balancing documentation with the act of being present, this was worth a quick read 

In a nostalgic twist, Smashing Pumpkins announced this 2018 [reunion] tour with a video featuring the original "Siamese Dream" album cover stars, Ali Laenger and LySandra Roberts, who are now adults. Besides making any '90s kid feel positively ancient it was also a stark reminder that time doesn't stand still. The classic rock phenomenon – bands touring with a negligible amount of original members – long ago started trickling down into other, younger genres. That Smashing Pumpkins would be on a victory lap without all original members isn't out of the ordinary. It's just a tough bit of historical revisionism to swallow.

- The Smashing Pumpkins are almost reunited - and that's the problem

A jeweler by trade, [Michel] Birkenwald founded and self-financed Barnes Hedgehogs around four years ago. The group drills the holes for free and generally advocates for the welfare of wild hedgehogs. Once Birkenwald has crafted a passage, he usually affixes a sign reading “Hedgehog Highway,” with the creature’s spiky silhouette. Even with a diamond drill tip, the work can be slow going. Victorian bricks are tough, and it can take upwards of an hour to carve a shape roughly the size of a CD – the smallest circumference that can comfortably accommodate the girth of “a porky hedgehog.” Whatever Birkenwald lacks in academic credentials – he doesn’t have much background in environmental science or zoology – he makes up for in earnestness. “I am just an average guy who decided to help one of our most adorable mammals,” he says. 

- Hedgehog Highways!

Our most revered institutions hold themselves to an ethical standard that does not allow accepting money from wealthy drug dealers – however tempting the prospect or worthwhile the project. They refuse to become philanthropic money launderers, cleansing dirty reputations by selling prestigious naming rights. There is one notable exception to this institutional honor code: the Sackler family.

- What do we do about the Sackler family's drug history? Also: this

"The lawsuit alleges the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the state Natural Resources Agency have been derelict in their duty by not acknowledging the existence of the Sasquatch species, despite a mountain of documented and scientific evidence. It has had a chilling effect on the study of the Sasquatch, considered illegitimate and relegated to the category of 'paranormal research.'"

- Safety first! Also, note to self: go squatchin' one of these days.

Researchers long thought humans were the only critters out there that could see in three dimensions. Known as stereopsis, the trick takes a lot of processing power – and scientists didn’t think many animals had enough brains to do it. But that idea has slowly changed overtime. During the late 20th century, scientists found that macaques, cats, horses, owls and toads have this superpower. And surprisingly, so does the tiny-brained praying mantises. Now, as Ed Yong reports for the Atlantic, researchers equipped praying mantises with tiny goggles to figure out how stereopsis works in a critter with so few neurons.

- Praying mantis goggles!

For Your Enjoyment #44

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There's no denying, however, that Patagonia is a for-profit enterprise and that, for all the good it does, it exists to make money. In its efforts to do so, Patagonia contributes to the industrialization of the environmental tourism trend which, in itself, can pose a threat to some of the very national monuments it seeks to protect.

- Patagonia’s “The President Stole Your Land” raises some tough questions (image above)

“I lift up the animal’s tail,” said Joanne Crawford, a wildlife ecologist at Southern Illinois University, “and I’m like, ‘Get down there, and stick your nose near its bum … People think I’m nuts. I tell them, ‘Oh, but it’s beavers; it smells really good.'”

- Ever wonder from where vanilla flavoring comes?

In software engineering, rubber duck debugging or rubber ducking is a method of debugging code. The name is a reference to a story in the book "The Pragmatic Programmer" in which a programmer would carry around a rubber duck and debug their code by forcing themselves to explain it, line-by-line, to the duck.

- I'm going to require my students to start carrying around rubber ducks (h/t DM)

The richest way to see “Le Petit Prince” is as an extended parable of the kinds and follies of abstraction – and the special intensity and poignance of the story is that Saint-Exupéry dramatizes the struggle against abstraction not as a philosophical subject but as a life-and-death story. The book moves from asteroid to desert, from fable and comedy to enigmatic tragedy, in order to make one recurrent point: You can’t love roses. You can only love a rose.

- The Strange Triumph of "The Little Prince"

“The images are shortlisted by how funny they are and the technical quality of their photograph,” says contest co-founder and co-judge Paul Joynson-Hicks, “subsequently the [finalists] are judged purely on their humour and content.”

- 20 Top Photos from the 2017 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards (h/t TheCoolComfort)

Poverty porn, wrote Jorgen Lissner, who first popularised the term in 1981 as an appropriate label for the aid campaigns targeting developing countries, “exposes something in human life that is as delicate and deeply personal as sexuality, that is, suffering ... It puts people’s bodies, their misery, their grief and their fear on display with all the details and all the indiscretion that a telescopic lens will allow.”

- Poverty porn

It all started with the muffin top, that telltale spillage of flesh over the top of a tight waistband. Then came the bingo wing, the supposedly shaming droop of flesh beneath middle-aged arms; or maybe it was the cankle (chubby ankle), or the saggy knee. I forget now. It’s hard for women to keep track of which specific body part is currently being shamed to death, when it seems to be open season on all of them.

- These body-shaming fads need to stop. 

In Utah, she said, the internalized shame runs deep. “Our [Mormon] culture objectifies women’s bodies. You’re told that if you’re wearing something immodest, you are walking pornography. It’s your responsibility to control how men see you,” Tulley said. This is reflected in Mormon literature: “Central to the command to be modest is an understanding of the sacred power of procreation, the ability to bring children into the world,” reads the official church website at lds.org. “Revealing and sexually suggestive clothing, which includes short shorts and skirts, tight clothing, and shirts that do not cover the stomach, can stimulate desires and actions that violate the Lord’s law of chastity.” 

- Mormon women and the #metoo movement

In the fall of 2013, Charlotte Lindqvist got a call from a film company making an Animal Planet documentary about the yeti, the mythical apelike creature that roams the Himalayas. So, not the kind of thing scientists usually like to mess with. Lindqvist said yes because she is a geneticist who studies bears, and the rare Himalayan brown bear is one possible origin of the yeti legend. The team from Icon Films wanted to use science to investigate whether the yeti is real; Lindqvist wanted to investigate the enigmatic bears of the Himalayas.

- Are Yetis actually just a bunch of bears?

I have to be honest: I really don’t understand white people. They’re confusing! I mean, white people are in charge of everything in America, they dominate government, business, finance, tech, real estate – every industry that matters – and yet guess who feels like they’re discriminated against? That’s right, white people, some 55% of whom say whites are discriminated against in America today, according to a new NPR/Robert Wood Johnson/Harvard poll. I don’t understand how people with such a tight grip on power in America could be so insecure about it. So I decided to ask some white people about it.

- Racial discrimination against white people  

Jeremy was found dead on Wednesday. But "the sad news comes with a bittersweet twist," writes the University of Nottingham. "Shortly before his death, Jeremy was finally able to produce offspring after mating three times with another 'lefty' snail, ensuring that his legacy will live on through continuing genetic studies into his rare mutation."

- Jeremy: A Snail Love Story

The point is that [Billy] Corgan’s dissociation with truth is hardly headline-worthy news. The question is, has Corgan gone from harmless reality-star-level-insanity to purveyor of toxic ideologies, and what should we do about it?

- What do I do if the frontman of my all-time favorite band is actually kind of toxic?   

“We take a kind of vow of poverty to continue practicing our profession,” Debra Leigh Scott, who is working on a documentary about adjuncts, said in an email. “We do it because we are dedicated to scholarship, to learning, to our students and to our disciplines.” Adjuncting has grown as funding for public universities has fallen by more than a quarter between 1990 and 2009. Private institutions also recognize the allure of part-time professors: generally they are cheaper than full-time staff, don’t receive benefits or support for their personal research, and their hours can be carefully limited so they do not teach enough to qualify for health insurance. This is why adjuncts have been called “the fast-food workers of the academic world”: among labor experts adjuncting is defined as “precarious employment”, a growing category that includes temping and sharing-economy gigs such as driving for Uber. 

- The glamorous life of The Adjunct Professor Next Door  

You can find house cats on every continent except Antarctica. But that wasn't always the case. How did cats make it across oceans and into households worldwide? The secret lies in ancient cat DNA, which a team of scientists traced back thousands of years. 

- An animated map of how cats spread across the world!

For Your Enjoyment #43

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If there’s one thing I learned in this odyssey, it’s that automatic cat feeders are the equivalent of giving a piece of dental floss to someone serving life in prison. With infinite time, you can escape anything, and (it turns out) break into almost any robot.

- Cat v. Cat Feeder (images above; h/t DM)

Since 2013 the number of cheaters has tripled as it has become more socially acceptable to commit streaming adultery. What’s worse is that most say they plan to keep on cheating. Indeed, 63 percent of cheaters say they’d gladly do it more if they knew they’d get away with it, and nearly half of those who do the dirty are repeat offenders – once a Netflix cheater always a Netflix cheater.

- I once caught D watching the next episode of Westworld without me, so I watched the next episode of Stranger Things without him. 

One takeaway: celebrity endorsements in presidential politics don’t matter anymore. Another, more likely and long-term: They hurt. Why? It’s an old saw in conservative circles that Hollywood liberals – and, by extension, the cultural and coastal elite – are out of touch with mainstream America. While celebrities spoke of social issues, of preserving Obama’s legacy, of the first female president, a huge swath of America voted for one reason: rage at being left behind, economically and culturally.

- Even Miley Cyrus couldn't change the outcome of this election

In the pitch black of night on the Colorado River's burly Lava Falls rapid, an aluminum bar had snapped and punctured a 4-inch hole in the inflatable beam of the custom-built craft. The air hissing from the punctured tube wasn’t just the sound of trouble. It signaled the dissipation of a dream to paddle the 277-mile length of the Colorado River’s Grand Canyon in record time.

- This valiant but ultimately failed recent attempt at breaking the Grand Canyon speed record 

From Bill Callahan's "dumbest team in America" rant to Norv Turner's painfully awkward two-year tenure to Art Shell's unfortunate one-year "fox in the hen house" return to Lane Kiffin being eviscerated in Al Davis' awesome overhead projector presser that included an intermission to Tom Cable's sanguine "We're not losers anymore" proclamation after going 8-8 in 2010 to Hue Jackson's epic meltdown to Allen's uninspiring visor and sharpie, it's been quite the chaotic ride. But none actually pulled the culture change off until Del Rio - who grew up in the shadow of the Oakland Coliseum in nearby Hayward and shared the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum with the Raiders in college at USC - arrived.

- Raider Nation

When are we going to face up to the fact that we have got our priorities all wrong? When are we going to stop the blame game and take the steps that need to be taken to improve conditions in our schools for both teachers and students and, in doing so, inevitably raise standards?

- The state of education. Sigh.

“I think that gnawed at Michael a little bit,” said author Max Byrd, a longtime friend of Crichton’s from their undergraduate days at Harvard, “that if you were popular you can’t be very good. Michael kept talking about Charles Dickens – Dickens was both popular and good. It vexed him when people would just say, ‘Well, a pop writer or a pop scientist.’” 

- Revisiting Michael Crichton's life and career 

[W]hen the public finds out a goddess is in fact a striving mortal, this revelation will push her into a very different kind of myth: one whose satisfying conclusion comes not when a woman is exalted, but when she is destroyed.

- The tragic rise and fall of Anna Nicole Smith

Force me from power, [Trump] will conclude, and these hate-filled enemies will come for you and give the “tremendous advantages” he was pretending blacks enjoyed in the 1980s to their favoured minorities. The alternative, and not only in America, is to go back to the despised and patronised working-class followers of the right. You should try to win them over in elections rather than march with the already converted at rallies. You should cordon off the true racists and fascists and listen to and argue with the rest with a modicum of respect. If that can happen, then perhaps the world will learn that the best way to end the power of compulsive liars is to break the compulsion of their followers to believe.

- In not-at-all groundbreaking news: the real problem lies not necessarily in the liar, but in the believers

"Politicians in the state don’t seem to get that the outdoor industry – and their own state economy – depend on access to public lands for recreation. I say enough is enough. If Governor Herbert doesn’t need us, we can find a more welcoming home. Governor Herbert should direct his Attorney General to halt their plans to sue and support the historic Bears Ears National Monument. He should stop his efforts to transfer public lands to the state, which would spell disaster for Utah’s economy. He should show the outdoor industry he wants our business – and that he supports thousands of his constituents of all political persuasions who work in jobs supported by recreation on public lands. We love Utah, but Patagonia’s choice to return for future shows will depend on the Governor’s actions."

- Patagonia et al. plans to skip this year's Outdoor Retailer show.

On January 24, the official Badlands feed posted, “Today, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years. #climate.” Coming as the Trump administration removed references to climate change from the White House website and froze the Environmental Protection Agency’s funding for research (the freeze was lifted on Friday), this bare factual tweet rang of defiance. Shortly afterward, it was taken down. Soon thereafter, the alternative accounts began to appear.

- "The Gentle Anarchy of the Park Ranger"

For Your Enjoyment* #42, POTUS Ed.

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* a subjective term

 
 

Donald Trump, a person who will never be president, has nevertheless been the nexus of the American media's coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign season.

- Gawker, September 2015 (image above)

If you're waiting for Donald Trump to pivot to become "presidential" - a candidate who will stay on message and, objectively speaking, not hurt his own campaign - then I have one word for you. Stop. Really. Because it just isn't going to happen.

- CNN, July 2016

First off, Donald Trump is never going to be the president of the United States. Whether you like him, simply find him amusing, or like most Americans, feel something between mild irritation and absolute hatred for the real estate mogul-turned-reality TV star, you probably know that his brand of fiery, accusatory, blowhard rhetoric doesn’t play well with voters.

- Ask Men, August 2016

Under “President Trump,” America would degenerate to its ugliest, darkest days. He would single-handedly destroy its reputation and the 240-year-old principles on which it stands. And that is precisely why Donald Trump cannot, will not, be elected president.

- HuffPo, June 2016

[A] new examination of the demographics and projected voting patterns in some of the key Rust Belt states underscores just how unlikely [Trump's winning the general election] really is. To succeed, this analysis finds, Trump would likely have to improve on Mitt Romney’s advantage over Barack Obama among blue collar whites by double digit margins, which is an astronomically high bar — in almost all of these states.

- The Washington Post, March 2016

The irony, of course, is that Trump has more in common with the elites who will lie down on the tracks to stop his candidacy than with the voters who profess to love him. If this is a game, Trump is not supposed to be on the field – he's supposed to be in the owners' box, deciding who gets to play. National politics is like smashmouth football, and Trump was not built to be a player. There's a reason why you never see the owners on the gridiron.

- Vice, August 2015

It is to the eternal discredit of the Republican Party’s that they have embarrassed the country by nominating a man like Donald Trump. But he’s not going to win in November, because he doesn’t have the votes. No matter what the angry white GOP primary voters think, America as a whole – this complex, multiracial, Information Age, economically resilient, World’s Greatest Democracy of a country – is not going to elect an angry orange clown. Donald Trump might do a lot of damage to America’s political culture, but he will never be president.

- Paste, May 2016

"What kind of a man does that? Root for people to get thrown out on the street? Root for people to lose their jobs? Root for people to lose their pensions? Root for two little girls in Clark County, Nevada, to end up living in a van? What kind of a man does that? I'll tell you exactly what kind – a man who cares about no one but himself. A small, insecure moneygrubber who doesn’t care who gets hurt, so long as he makes some money off it. What kind of man does that? A man who will never be President of the United States."  

- Sen. Elizabeth Warren, May 2016

Issues matter, plans for the country matter, ability to govern matters – and none of those things are strengths of Donald Trump. He is first and foremost a man with a tremendous ego that needs to be fed, not a man of serious ideas or well thought out positions that go beyond sound bites. His bluster and unvarnished rhetoric have gotten him farther than I would have thought but, at the end of the day, the American people will not buy what he is selling.

- US News, August 2015

Before one more straight-faced political story is written about the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump, the obvious begs to be stated: The man has absolutely no chance of winning. Zero. Nada. Write it down. Take it to the bank. Bet the farm. This preening self-parody of an egomaniac will never, ever be elected president of the United States. 

- Miami Herald, July 2015

And here's the bedrock obstacle to Trump's success: There are simply not enough struggling, resentful, xenophobic white people in the US to constitute a national majority sufficient to win a presidential election. Bottom line: The strongman approach is inherently self-limiting. It flourishes in the bizarro environs of a modern Republican primary, but there is no evidence at all, and much to the contrary, that it could be used to assemble a national majority. Yet it is the only approach in Trump's toolbox. That is why he will never be president.

- Vox, January 2016

So, could Trump win? We confront two stubborn facts: first, that nobody remotely like Trump has won a major-party nomination in the modern era. And second, as is always a problem in analysis of presidential campaigns, we don’t have all that many data points, so unprecedented events can occur with some regularity. For my money, that adds up to Trump’s chances being higher than 0 but (considerably) less than 20 percent. There are lots of undecideds, and Clinton's polling leads are somewhat thin in swing states. Nonetheless, Clinton is probably going to win, and she could win by a big margin. 

- Nate Silver, November 2015 / November 2016

Americans have never chosen someone like [Donald Trump] to lead one of their two major parties. And now that he’s the presumptive nominee, Americans will - for the first time in their history - have a choice of whether they’ll put him in the Oval Office, to lead the country for four years. They almost certainly won’t. 

- Slate, April 2016

"I continue to believe that Mr Trump will not be president. And the reason is because I have a lot of faith in the American people."

- President Barack Obama

For Your Enjoyment #41, The Animal Ed.

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“Government wildlife agencies are charged with managing species to achieve positive outcomes at the population level but there’s no doubt that most people relate to animals on an individual level,” [Yellowstone superintendent Dan] Wenk said recently. “I believe individual bears like 399 can solidify the sense of connection citizens feel to public lands and public wildlife they own.”

- Grizzy 399 is alive and well! (image above)

Sam Steingard of Germantown, Maryland, didn’t have a date to his senior prom last year, so he looked around and found an adorable companion right in his own home: his cat, Ruby.

- This guy is my hero.

A previous winner of the ‘World’s Ugliest Dog’ title for his “natural ugliness in both pedigree and mutt classes” has redeemed himself by taking out a ‘Most Heroic Hound’ award this week. Mugly, a twelve-year-old Chinese Crested dog, won the National Pet Show award in London for his work with British Organisation, Therapy Dogs Nationwide. 

- Looks really DON'T matter.

What you don't hear amid all the noise surrounding the Bison Legacy Act is anything about the continued mismanagement of the last truly wild bison. These herds have existed on the American landscape since prehistoric times but are now found only in in Yellowstone National Park, where they survive under a management program defined by round-up, quarantine, and slaughter conducted in the interest of a far more powerful icon of the American West: the livestock rancher.

- National Mammal or not, we continue to slaughter bison left and right

In a recent post on social media, an officer working for West Midland Police's Central Motorway department shared an image of three sheep that had been rescued from suspected poachers. Confusingly, though, the sheep's faces had been blurred.

- Sheep need to have their identity protected, too

While visiting his mother-in-law in a mountainous village in southwestern Korea, Koo Eun-je saw a cat outside, wondered how it survived and put out leftover fish for it. The next day, the cat was back so Koo kept feeding him, and the others who followed. Finally, he set up a surveillance camera and livestreamed the scene online. “We started the channel simply for me and my wife to watch, but other viewers also started watching it.” Four months on, 110,000 South Koreans watched the show on a monthly average and more than 10,000 of them have bookmarked the show. Some viewers sent him virtual cash items, which help cover his living expenses and cat food. Others send food and donations to Koo. As his cat TV got popular, at least one copycat show emerged. 

- South Korea: Where watching stray cats eating is the newest online fad

Pierre, despite his three-year featherless period, lived a full life, tending to the nest he shared with his longtime lady friend Homey, enjoying a spot of herring here and there and fathering more than a dozen offspring. It was 2005 when the plucky African penguin lost his feathers for reasons that remain a mystery. He began to feel insecure, as many of us would without our normal coverings, and lost interest in eating and hanging out with Homey. The other penguins rudely ostracized Pierre. “It made him look different. The bird that stands out is drawing attention, which isn't good. You don't want to draw attention to yourself when you are potentially prey,” Brenda Melton, curator for the aquarium, told The Chronicle in 2014. “Pierre became a liability.” Pam Schaller, an aquatic biologist, swooped in to restore Pierre’s confidence with a custom wetsuit that got him back in the water and, more importantly, back in the good graces of Homey. He returned to their nest around 2008 when his feathers reappeared. Once his feathers returned, Pierre came to dominate the academy’s penguin exhibit as the alpha bird, said Vikki McCloskey, assistant aquarium curator.

- Rest in peace, dear wetsuitted Pierre

In the worst-case scenario, a complementary strain [of white-nose syndrome, WNS,] has been introduced into North America and will eventually find its way to locations where the East Coast strain exists, facilitating a more recalcitrant and adaptable pathogen. In the best-case scenario, this case represents a loss of containment within North America, reducing the value of efforts to slow the westward spread of WNS while treatments can be developed and western bat hibernacula can be identified. Either way, the news of a WNS-positive bat in Washington state represents another disaster for bats that are already experiencing unprecedented declines.

- Oh no. (Related: read more about WNS over here)

In the video, the humpback whale is seen breaching twice. Minus a few curse words as they are surprised to see it, the dialogue as they watch it breach is funny. One of the men aboard the boat can be heard saying, “Oh ****! Did you see that?” One of his buddies responds, “I got him,” as he tries to get video. Another adds, “We’re whale watching.” Another person says, “Look at there.” And one, seemingly in awe, said, “Unbelievable.” But scientists said seeing a humpback in the bay isn’t all that rare.

- … There are humpback whales in the Chesapeake??! 

"Ah-choo." 

- This guy

Here’s what most American birdwatchers are, according to a 2013 government study: White, older than 45, fairly well-off and pretty highly educated. Here’s what many people think birdwatchers are: Creepy.

- Sorry, birdwatchers: People think you're creepy

Whether you love or hate your job, here's a position you might be happier in: Chief Wombat Cuddler. Tourism Tasmania is holding a contest for Australian residents to meet 8-month-old Derek, a sweet little guy who is melting the Internet's collective heart. "Not only will you and a friend be flown from your nearest Australian capital city to Tasmania's Flinders Island to smother our little friend with cuddles, you'll get to spend three nights exploring Derek's island home," the contest's website says.

- Justin Johnston, winner of the Chief Wombat Cuddler Competition, landed the World's Best Job

The Avon Valley Adventure and Wildlife Park in Bristol, England, says it received an anonymous package filled with eight hand-knit jumpers for the park’s eight 2-week-old lambs. “The jumpers were left outside the park with a note to say they were for the baby lambs,” the park’s marketing manager, Kim Pounsberry, told ABC News. The lambs needed the extra warmth from the jumpers because they are orphans and it helps their survival, according to Pounsberry.  

- There are some wonderful people out there

In 2005, when Mr. Goynes first met [wheaten terrier] Sonja, he was living in a refrigerator box in the entranceway of a building down the block, in the West 50s. He’d been homeless since the 1970s, spent years freebasing cocaine. But he had gotten clean in 2000, and he was scraping along doing odd jobs on the block. “After I got Sonja, he saw various people walking her when I was at work,” said [Sonja’s owner] Ms. Kilty. “He said to me, ‘I can walk your dog.’ He said this to me several times and eventually I thought why not give it a try, because he clearly needed some income and support.” “It helped me get myself together,” Mr. Goynes said. “It keeps you from messing around, doing other things bad. I got a dog-walking job, I’ve got to maintain. I was on the street when I met Sonja. Now look at me. I’m 67 years old. I came through the ranks, sir. She helped me, I helped her.” Mr. Goynes found a permanent home in 2007: spartan quarters in a building on East 28th Street run by the nonprofit supportive-housing provider now known as Breaking Ground. One room, a chair, a bed, a little fridge, a television, a bathroom. He walked Sonja most weekends. Sometimes he would house-sit the dog in Ms. Kilty’s penthouse, sometimes for weeks at a time. “He was so reliable and so good, and she loved him so much,” she said. Mr. Goynes liked to watch sports on Ms. Kilty’s big TV. Last spring, Sonja fell ill with inoperable cancer. Mr. Goynes asked Ms. Kilty for Sonja’s tags so he can put them on a necklace. On Thursday, she gave them to him.

- Sometimes pets help us more than we help them

For Your Enjoyment #40, Race To The White House 2016 Ed. (Part 3)

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See Part 1 and Part 2

It would seem that — like a lot of Republicans — they’re just not that into you, dude.

- Even Ted Cruz's own family can't deal with him (image above)

[W]hen I hear Bernie speak, I feel like I’m the problem with America. I’m one of those millionaires he mentions who should pay more taxes. I’m the bad guy. I’m the white male who is only successful because everything was handed to me. I don’t deserve the money I made. All the things I sacrificed don’t matter. The additional stress I was under doesn’t matter. The risks I took don’t matter. According to Bernie, the world needs fewer people like me, and more people like the smart Yale student who majors in something useless, travels the world, and then graduates with $100,000 in debt that people like me should pay off via higher taxes.

- "Dear Bernie Sanders, Sorry I'm The Problem With America"

As the Trump campaign has accrued power, its treatment of the media has grown even more worrisome … If you want a picture of a future Trump presidency, imagine a reporter shouting questions into an empty void.

- What it's like to be a reporter on the Trump Trail. Spoiler alert: it sounds horrible. (h/t DM)

According to a new Deseret News/KSL poll, if Donald Trump becomes the GOP nominee, the voters of Utah would opt for a Democratic candidate for the first time in over 50 years. Poll respondents said they would support either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders over Trump, though Clinton was only two points ahead of Trump in the poll, falling within the margin of error. As many as 16 percent of respondents said they would skip the election altogether if Trump was the nominee. 

- Utah: A Blue State?

An episode of the beloved American sitcom that aired almost exactly 16 years ago – on March 19, 2000 – features Donald Trump as President of the United States, presiding over a broken economy.  “It was a warning to America,” one of the writers, Dan Greaney, told the Hollywood Reporter. The idea of a Trump presidency, he added, came about when the writers needed to invent a world in which “everything went as bad as it possibly could.”

- The Simpsons: our modern day Magic 8 Ball

I believe Clinton has the experience and knowledge to deliver on her promises. And her mission has always been to care for the American people. I have disagreed with Clinton's positions from time to time but, like any good leader, she listens, processes information and adjusts based on knowledge. We have a tendency in our political discourse to claim that this type of change is "flip-flopping" or "waffling," but this is simply not a fair assessment of Clinton's record. We need a president with a core set of values, but we cannot afford to have an entrenched individual who refuses to see both sides of an argument. Now, more than ever, we need a diplomat in the White House.

- Unlike the majority of Utahans, SLC Mayor Jackie Biskupski supports Hillary

Ted Cruz really isn’t the guy to make the case that Obama is not acting presidential, given that his own response to the Brussels attack has been hysteria, demagoguery, and a foul sop to anti-Muslim sentiment. As my colleague Elias Isquith writes, Cruz is talking an abhorrent abuse of government power that takes existing anti-Muslim sentiment in the country and enshrining it as official policy. He’s proposed denying American citizens their civil liberties and using the heavy hand of the state to treat them as potential criminals for no other reason than their faith. And this guy is going to give a lecture on how to act presidential? He sees a terrorist attack unfold overseas and his immediate instinct is to bomb things, violate religious freedom, and curtail civil liberties at home.

- Ted Cruz needs to calm down.

"One of the great strengths of the United States and part of the reason we have not seen more attacks on the United States: We have an extraordinary successful, patriotic, integrates Muslim-American community … any approach that would single them out or target them for discrimination is not only wrong and un-America, but it would also be counter-productive. As far as the notion of having surveillance of neighborhoods where Muslims are present, I just left a country that engages in that kind of neighborhood surveillance. Which, by the way, the father of Senator Cruz escaped for America, the land of the free."

- Obama wonderfully shoots down Ted Cruz's horrifying plan to "secure" Muslim neighborhoods

There is an inauthenticity in appeals to anger rather than to reason, for simplified solutions rather than ones that stand a chance of working. This is true about Donald Trump, and lamentably also true about Sanders. On the question of experience, the ability to enact progressive change, and the issue of who can win the general election and the presidency, the clear and urgent choice is Hillary Clinton.

- Rolling Stone endorses Hillary for President

I didn't care about Senator Cruz one way or the other until I watched the first Republican debate. I noticed that his countenance doesn’t move the way I typically expect faces to move. Human faces can’t help but broadcast what we feel, what we may be thinking, and even what we may intend. I have rarely, if ever, seen a conventional smile from Senator Cruz. The eyes give away one’s game and help us tell forged from genuine smiles. No matter what the emotional coloring of Senator Cruz’s outward rhetoric is, his mouth typically tightens into the same straight line. If it deviates from this, then the corners of his mouth bend down, not upwards. The outside of his eyebrows bend down, too, when he emotes, something so atypical that it disturbs me. For the record I am not a Democrat. I’m at a loss to verbalize what unsettles me so when I watch the freshman senator. But it leaves me cold.

- Another reason to be creeped out by Ted Cruz: his face

Nate Silver points out that while polling from May 2015 shows a plurality of voters under 30 supporting socialism, that figure drops to a mere 15 percent among those over 65. The reason for this is not difficult to see. It reflects a difference in personal experience. Millennials either missed the Cold War entirely or were young children in its final years, with little or no conception of the triumph of liberty achieved with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. They do not understand the menace that socialism – combined with power – posed to the people it enslaved and to the free nations that it threatened. The violence and brutality of the communist regimes of the past are irrelevant, just lines in the history book somewhere between the Spanish-American War and 9/11. It’s more personal for older Americans. Perhaps some of their friends or neighbors – or they themselves – arrived in this country just ahead of Soviet tanks that were rolling into their homeland. Perhaps they remember the stories of citizens of these supposed utopian socialist prison states arrested, “disappeared,” tortured, or shot simply for trying to cross a border. Perhaps they remembered cowering under their school desks during drills in case of a nuclear attack, planned in communist Russia and launched from communist Cuba. This is the context young American voters should know as they prepare to cast their vote this year – many of them for the first time. We should all be mindful of the power of words and ideologies, and how discredited ideas can flourish again as memories of their failure fade. We cannot forget the lessons of history. All of us, but especially the youngest among us who will have to live in that world for the longest, should make this election about the future by rejecting the ugly, violent legacy of socialism’s past.

- Do we even know what "socialism" means anymore?

Marxist governments trample on individual rights because Marxist theory does not care about individual rights. Marxism is a theory of class justice. The only political rights it respects are those exercised by members of the oppressed class, with different left-wing ideological strands defining those classes in economic, racial, or gender terms, or sometimes all at once. Unlike liberalism, which sees rights as a positive-sum good that can expand or contract for society as a whole, Marxists (and other left-wing critics of liberalism) think of political rights as a zero-sum conflict. Either they are exercised on behalf of oppression or against it. Any Marxist government immediately sets about snuffing out the political rights of parties or ideas deemed reactionary (a category that also inevitably expands to describe any challenge to the powers that be). Repression is woven into Marxism’s ideological fabric. The case for democratic, pluralistic, incremental, market-friendly governance rooted in empiricism – i.e., liberalism – has never been stronger than now. What an odd time to abandon a successful program for an ideology that has failed everywhere it has been tried.

- Liberalism: Yay; Marxism: Nay

In an interview with Slate, the historian of fascism Robert Paxton warns against describing Donald Trump as fascist because “it’s almost the most powerful epithet you can use.”  But in this case, the shoe fits.  And here is why. Like Mussolini, Trump rails against intruders (Mexicans) and enemies (Muslims), mocks those perceived as weak, encourages a violent reckoning with those his followers perceive as the enemy within (the roughing up of protesters at his rallies), flouts the rules of civil political discourse (the Megyn Kelly menstruation spat), and promises to restore the nation to its greatness not by a series of policies, but by the force of his own personality (“I will be great for” fill in the blank). To quote Paxton again, this time from his seminal “The Anatomy of Fascism”: “Fascist leaders made no secret of having no program.” This explains why Trump supporters are not bothered by his ideological malleability and policy contradictions: He was pro-choice before he was pro-life; donated to politicians while now he rails against that practice; married three times and now embraces evangelical Christianity; is the embodiment of capitalism and yet promises to crack down on free trade.  In the words of the Italian writer Umberto Eco, fascism was “a beehive of contradictions.” Like Mussolini, Trump is dismissive of democratic institutions.  He selfishly guards his image of a self-made outsider who will “dismantle the establishment” in the words of one of his supporters.  That this includes cracking down on a free press by toughening libel laws, engaging in the ethnic cleansing of 11 million people (“illegals”), stripping away citizenship of those seen as illegitimate members of the nation (children of the “illegals”), and committing war crimes in the protection of the nation (killing the families of suspected terrorists) only enhances his stature among his supporters.  The discrepancy between their love of America and these brutal and undemocratic methods does not bother them one iota.  To borrow from Paxton again: “Fascism was an affair of the gut more than of the brain.”  For Trump and his supporters, the struggle against “political correctness” in all its forms is more important than the fine print of the Constitution... [F]or a historical analogy to be useful to us, it has to advance our understanding of the present.  And the Trumpism-Fascism axis (pun intended) does this in three ways: it explains the origins of Trump the demagogue; it enables us to read the Trump rally as a phenomenon in its own right; and it allows those of us who are unequivocally opposed to hate, bigotry, and intolerance, to rally around an alternative, equally historical, program: anti-fascism.

- Trump and the modern fascist movement (h/t MH for this great article)

Speaking with a CNN reporter, Terry proudly pointed to his wife as an example of immigration done "correctly." "It's not fair to her to let the illegals stay here. She does everything right. She works, she pays taxes, she votes," he said. The couple said they both planned to vote for Trump.  

Paul Weber of Appleton, Iowa, describing himself as "kind of a redneck" at an October Trump rally in Waterloo, said he was tired of the so-called "new Americans" flooding the country. "The people that are coming in here from China, Indonesia and all of them countries, they're getting pregnant and coming here and having babies," Weber said, telling an Asian reporter that he meant no offense. "They get everything and the people that were born here can't get everything."

"Islam is traced patrilineally. I am a Muslim if my father is Muslim. In that sense, it is undeniable that Barack Obama was born a Muslim," Michael Rooney said at a Trump event in Worcester, Massachusetts, in November. Rooney, a respiratory therapist in his late 40s, likened Obama's Christian faith to Caitlyn Jenner's recent gender transition: "It is true that he now identifies as a Christian in the same sense that Bruce Jenner identifies as a woman." At another rally in Manassas, Virginia, on December 2, Robin Reif, 54, yelled into the crowd that the President was from Kenya. He told CNN afterward that Obama was "too much of a Muslim" and an "Islamist sympathizer." "In our Constitution, it says that the president has to be an American citizen," Reif said. "I'm still wondering where is he really from. What is this man's background?"

Rhett Benhoff, a middle-aged white man at a December Trump campaign event in Raleigh, North Carolina, said discrimination against whites is "absolutely" real. "I mean, it seems like we really go overboard to make sure all these other nationalities nowadays and colors have their fair shake of it, but no one's looking out for the white guy anymore," he said. At the Trump rally in Myrtle Beach, where signs that read "silent majority" dotted the crowd, Patricia Saunders told CNN that Trump is speaking directly to a segment of the population that feels left behind and marginalized. "White Americans founded this country," said Saunders, 64. "We are being pushed aside because of the President's administration and the media."

Brothers Ernie Martin and Lee Walter from Cresco, Iowa, were among a group of zealous Trump fans at the front of the line outside a Trump rally in Des Moines on December 11. They had waited more than seven hours to see the candidate in person. "Hey, hey. Ho, ho. All the Muslims have to go!" Walter, a 64-year-old retired factory worker, began to chant. "I don't want [Muslims] here," Ed Campbell said. "Who knows what they're going to bring into this country?" 

Bickie Mason, a contractor from Lyman, South Carolina, who attended Trump's Spartanburg rally in November, said he felt he didn't have a choice but to agree with Trump's idea of tracking Muslim-Americans through a national database. "I don't believe all Muslims are bad. But anybody can turn bad, and you've got to be able to locate them and know where they're at," said Mason, 64. 

"Islam is not a religion. It's a violent blood cult. OK?" said Hoyt Wood, a 68-year-old military veteran waiting to hear Trump speak aboard the U.S.S. Yorktown in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. "All they know is violence, that's all they know." At the same rally, 55-year-old Susan Kemmelin said, "We can't look at a Muslim and tell if they're a terrorist or friendly."

Robert Engelkes, a 45-year-old corn and soybean farmer from Dike, Iowa, pointed out that there is historical precedent for targeting one group. "What did we do in World War II? We put all the Japanese in internment camps," said Engelkes, who was standing outside a Trump event in Des Moines. "We had to do something with them."

At a campaign rally in Rock Hill, South Carolina, this month, a Muslim woman wearing a hijab stood up in silent protest as Trump spoke about the hidden presence of ISIS among Syrian refugees. As Rose Hamid was escorted out of the building, one person shouted: "You have a bomb, you have a bomb." 

- "Why I'm Voting For Trump" - The only thing scarier than Donald Trump (besides maybe Ted Cruz) are these people

For Your Enjoyment #39

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The cute little Atlantic puffin might not strike you as a vessel built for life on the open ocean. But nothing could be further from the truth.

- Puffin researchers are learning more about the little birds' winter migrations. (Image above. On a side note: How does one become a puffin researcher?) 

The Navy stopped training its service members to navigate by the stars about a decade ago, focusing instead on electronic navigational systems. But dears about the security of the Global Positioning System and a desire to return to the basics of naval training are pushing the fleet back toward this ancient method of finding a course across open water. 

- The USNA is bringing back navigation by stars!

Even so, finance isn’t the biggest source of U.S. billionaires...That remains inherited wealth (29%, down from 52% in 1996) and company founders (32%, little changed from 1996).

- Hey Billionaires: Did you actually work to earn that money or were you just born into it?

“You’re so pretty,” a woman at a concert told me. “My son is marrying a Vietnamese girl. Are you Vietnamese?” You’re so pretty, too! I wanted to say. My cousin is marrying a white guy from Tennessee. Are you from Tennessee? 

- Welcome to being Asian while not in Asia. 

Once complete in 2019, [the new Polar research vessel] will travel to the Arctic to carry out important research in polar environments using robotic, satellite and underwater monitoring technology, in order to help us understand the global impact of changing sea-levels. The ship will weigh 15,000 tonnes, have 20 science labs on board, and will carry nine double-decker buses worth of scientific equipment. [The Natural Environment Research Council] has asked the general public to submit names for the boat and then vote for their favourites. It seems though, that people are not taking the naming of a £200 million massive boat, meant for serious environmental research, all that seriously. 

- Boaty McBoatface? This is why we can't have nice things, Internets. (On a related note - its mascot can be Hooty McOwlface)

[Fred] Rogers believed in accepting others despite any differences, teaching by example, and making the world a better place — because the responsibility belongs to everybody. With the 2016 presidential campaign in full swing and Republican candidate Donald Trump slinging mud left and right, we could all use a little more of Rogers’ positivity — especially Trump himself. 

- Donald Trump: Listen to Mister Rodgers, please

Netflix has picked up Paramount Pictures’ domestic rights to The Little Prince, the new animated film based on the 1943 book by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. The studio had originally slated the movie to open in U.S. theaters on March 18, but then quietly pulled it off that date. It is now expected to premiere stateside on the streaming service later this year.

- Streaming or not, I'm not quite sure sure how I feel about this new Little Prince movie

DANA: You seem like a cool guy. / PATRICK: Yup, that’s me — cool guy. Don’t know what my internationally acclaimed indie-musician girlfriend sees in me, but there must be something, because we are very much in love and not breaking up anytime soon.

- "Tactful Ways People Have Told Me That They're in a Relationship"

A new grant has apparently made the [Golden Gate National Recreation Area makeover] possible, with spokesperson Alexandra Pickavet claiming that “for two and a half million dollars, it’s the largest grant in the country for the national parks for maintenance backlog.

- Crissy Field is getting a facelift

The animal kingdom is massive, but scientists know that they have only found a portion of its members. They are currently aware of about 2.3 million species—but that number increases by about 15,000 new additions per year, according to some estimates. Researchers from 12 institutions in the US collaborated for years to document and quantify all of these animals, and created a comprehensive diagram to illustrate each known species and its evolutionary relationship to one another. Their work was published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

- The Circle of Life, diagrammed

"When we used the Ahwahnee Hotel in marketing, we always put a little 'R' by it," said Dan Jensen, who managed Yosemite properties for Delaware North. "The existence of the fact that these names are protected and trademarked is just not a surprise to anybody. It wasn't sneaky."

- Update on Yosemite naming news: Thanks to Delaware North, now you can stay at the Majestic Yosemite Hotel in not-Yosemite-National-Park